Building from Source Code

For this post I have chosen to build the following two packages from the GNU Software Collection;

       GnuPG -- Version 1.4.11
       wdiff -- Version 0.6.5

These two packages can be obtained by using the following two commands;
       wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wdiff/wdiff-0.6.5.tar.gz
       wget ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gnupg/gnupg-1.4.11.tar.gz

After I downloaded the two packages I extracted the contents using the tar -zxf command. I then issued the ./configure command in both directories that were created after extracting the two packages.

While using the ./configure command I ran into no problems, all the required dependencies were already installed on my Fedora 14 System. Once the ./configure command returned successful I used the time make command for both packages, the results of this command are listed below;

          gnupg-1.4.11
          real    0m38.872s
          user    0m32.281s
          sys    0m4.720s

The binary created during the make process is located in ./g10/gpg. Basic instructions on how to use this package you can type the ./g10/gpg --help command.

          wdiff-0.6.5
          real    0m1.545s
          user    0m0.932s
          sys    0m0.394s

The binary created during the make process is located in ./src/wdiff. Basic instructions on how to use this package you can type the ./src/wdiff --help command.

Glossary
./configure ---> Configures the package for the specific system.
time make ---> Determines how long it took for the make command to execute.

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Gian-Luca Casella