What factors should be considered when installing packages manually?

Question

I have seen many packages' readme or install files on instructing how to install a package manually. But many times the results are erroneous.

They instruct us to do many thing with for example the configure file.

But many, many factors are involved in this procedure (dependencies, make, path variables and much more).

I am yet able to install a single package manually.

What are the common factors that should be considered with manual installations?

Solution

I am answering this question under my knowledge .

you have to install build-essential to compile any package manually .

     sudo apt-get install build-essential 

Then you can configure your package with ./configure Then make and sudo make install But one more thing you have to remember is that package dependencies . If you are installing a package means those will obtained automatically ,if not sudo apt-get install -f will do the job .

In the case of No internet connection , you have to collect all of them and thats a risky job , my opinion .

So if you want to install a package manually then you have to take care of the compilation tools nothing but build essential and dependencies of that package .

The above explanation applicable for any source packages .

But if you got builded packages directly i mean .DEB files then simply you can install them with

sudo dpkg -i filename.deb

and here also if dependencies issue may raise and you can take care of them with sudo apt-get install -f

If you got that package as a script(.sh) or binary file (.bin ) , the you can install with

chmod +x filenmae.sh
./filename.sh

for binary

chmod +x filename.bin
./filename.bin

Comments

[Admin]

By manual install do you mean installing from source or installing packages through dpkg?

[Admin]

Using sources or binaries... But not through dpkg or any installer program.

[Håken Lid]

If the program being compiled is in the repositories, sometimes the dependencies can be satisfied with sudo apt-get build-dep package; or if not, the readme included with the downloaded source code will detail the necessary dependencies.

[Sam]

Great! I wasn't aware of build-essential !! I have been thinking that we can do it without anything like that(or something like that is inbuilt)...Thanks! I'll try some package without internet today :)