Re: [gentoo-user] Installing outside of portage - segfault testing

[Alex Schuster]

Grant writes:
> motion keeps segfaulting on me, I've been over it with the motion
> list, and we're down to this:
>
> [quote]
> i've checked with a gentoo user in #motion channel
>
> wget
> http://surfnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/motion/motion-3.2.10.1.ta
>r.gz tar xfvz motion-3.2.10.1.tar.gz
> cd motion-3.2.10.1
> ./configure --with-developer-flags
> edit Makefile ( from motion directoty ) remove -O2 de CFLAGS
> make
> ./motion -n -d 10
>
>
> No issues , working good ... so problem is in gentoo emerge / ebuild ..
> or hardware problems
> [/quote]
>
> Won't that install files all over my system that I won't be able to
> get rid of later?

Not unless you issue a "make install", too. All stays in the local 
directory where you unpacked the tarball. Works for simpe projects, but 
other might need some files be installed in certain places.
Sometimes you can issue al "make uninstall" later to clean things up, but 
this is not always the case.

> What would you guys do in this situation?

Doing the "make install", but in a specific directory, like /usr/local. 
You can set this diretory with the --prefix option to configure. It seems 
to be the default often anyway.

But then you clutter your /usr/local directory. So I suggest using stow, 
or better, xstow, to install software. It goes like this:

cd myproject-1.2.3
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/myproject-1.2.3
make
su
emerge xstow
make install
cd /usr/local/stow
stow myproject-1.2.3

Now you have symlinks in /usr/local, as if you installed into /usr/local 
directly. To uninstall, issue a 'xstow -D myproject-1.2.3' and 
remove /usr/local/stow/myproject-1.2.3. All clean and tidy again.

	Wonko