Automating Tasks with make
make is an automation tool aimed at creating builds for software. It’s commonly used to compile and install software. Many times, package managers don’t have the very latest version of a particular piece of software available, so the only way to install the most recent version is to download the source code and compile it yourself. The process usually involves downloading the source code archive, extracting it, switching to the directory containing the code, running a script called configure to set some variables based on your environment, and running make to compile the software. It usually looks something like this:
| | $ ./configure |
| | $ make |
| | $ sudo make install |
make works by reading a file named ...
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