Compiling things in Gentoo

[d4mo]

Does gentoo try to stop you from compiling things that are not in portage. Like i've tried to compule a couple of things using the ./configure...make method and 90% of the time it doesn;t work. Is it just me not knowing how to compile or what? I'm almost always missing something it seems l like.

[at240]

Well, "gentoo" doesn't stop you trying to compile anything. The drawback is that if you are going to manage packages intelligently yourself in this way, you need to know exactly what files are being installed where, and you need to take care of dependencies yourself without breaking other things, you need to handle security updates and distribution-specific configuration etc. etc.---that can be a big task, and one that portage will probably do better than you unless you know things inside out.

What apps are you missing that aren't in portage? The database is very large, so it would surprise me if you had absolutely no options, unless your needs are very specialised indeed. You can sometimes track down experimental ebuilds in bugzilla and elsewhere for things that are not yet in there.

[d4mo]

I know it's followed by make install

I can't remember what one of the things was...it qas quite awhile ago. But recently it was a Apache Module and the other thing was a tool to configure the httpd.conf file for virtual hosts.

[d4mo]

When you compile things do you usually have to edit files and stuff before you can compile it? Or should it be as simple as ./configure..make...make install. Or do you usually have to edit files to make sure that file locations and libraries are alright?

[at240]

Personally, I never compile anything on my Gentoo machines other than via emerge.

I do, though, have a Linux from Scratch system or two, and whenever I compile anything on these I always read all the documentation in the package tarball. I also look at the output of ./configure --help and examine the Makefile too. It's also worth googling to see if others have run into difficulties.

More often than not, it's a question of passing options to configure, rather than editing things, but it depends on the package. The whole thing requires a lot of work. It makes me very grateful to the gentoo developers.

If I were you, I'd post specific requests for advice/help about the apache things you need. You never know---someone might have experience of compiling them, or be able to point you towards an ebuild.

[d4mo]

Ya i probably should have explained better. It's not so much for gentoo, but I'm trying to expand my linux knowledge as a whole

[at240]

In that case, you could do worse than trying out Linux from Scratch---in case you don't know, you build 'your own' distribution from source. At first you don't really learn that much other than how to follow instructions to the letter, but the more you play with it, the more you learn about compilation and package management. Like I said, it certainly taught me how valuable the gentoo portage system is. Good luck.