Have you also had bad experiences with programs that you have to compile yourself instead of simply installing?
Hello.
Unfortunately, there are some free, open-source programs that you have to compile yourself instead of simply installing them. And I hate that method because I haven't had a good experience with it. When I found a cool program on Github that you unfortunately had to compile yourself, I kept getting a compilation error. And that was even truer than I was doing exactly what the YouTube tutorial described in the terminal. And what's even crazier is that even Googling the error code doesn't help. Neither Google nor ChatGPT can explain to me why such an error occurs. ChatGPT also told me that it finds it strange.
And that's why I wanted to ask if you've had any good experiences compiling these programs yourself? Because I've never had any success compiling community programs myself.
(3 votes)
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In the Linux world, it is a common method to provide programs in source code and with a compilation script. The aids provided for the compilation can be different depending on the language and are not always completely unproblematic to use.
Compilation of C, C++ and Objective C is usually easy on Linux computers. This is also because the required help program make is pre-installed on most Linux systems. If the program to be compiled does not require any very special program libraries, compilation with make often succeeds at the moment. Otherwise, the necessary libraries must be installed in preparation.
If the auxiliary program CMake is used instead of make, the situation is slightly different: CMake must first be installed on many systems. The script files may also have to be adjusted.
Compiling with rarely used or with very new auxiliary programs (e.g. Meson) can be more problematic; These auxiliary pograms usually have to be installed first and often change quite frequently.
The compilation of Java with the auxiliary program often works quite well; however, the compilation of very new Java programs with an old SDK will usually fail because Java is currently undergoing a modernization process that occasionally causes version problems.
Compilation of C# with the development system has repeatedly caused problems in the past due to changes in the programming language and its libraries. In addition, the developers of mono well known neglect the tests and quality assurance.
Compilation of old Ada programs with a new version of the GNAT Ada Compiler can cause error messages that are not blurred in older compilers; in this situation, only the competent revision of the program or the return to an older compiler version helps.
Compilation of very old programs is often difficult when program libraries are provided that are no longer available on newer Linux systems or only available in a newer, incompatible version, or if the current compiler is more severely tested than older compilers did.
If you need to compile yourself, the instant success is not guaranteed; with some experience and the necessary know-how, however, it is often possible to fix errors occurring.
I don’t know what program you downloaded from Github, but usually there’s a documentation to explain how to compile the steps.
Or for C/C++ programs, there are often also so-called makefiles that take away compilation.
You have to follow the official instructions well and have installed all required programs. Many such programs are also designed to be compiled on Linux or macOS, but this should actually be the case. Nevertheless, it can of course come to faulty versions, which then do not compile.
I have been working with and on open source projects for years and have no problems in general. This can be different from case to case, but if you get an error message next time, you can report the issue tab to GitHub or ask for help in communities.
No. had a problem that was but because I were not found on windows and therefore some headers
Since I’ve been programming myself for a few years — uh – for a few decades (!) — no problems with it, no!