make vs. imake?

[Jeremy C. Reed]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005, Robert N. Eaton wrote:

> I recently tried to install a tarball of Firefox into my new Kubuntu. After I
> untarred and gunzipped, I tried make, make install and make clean.
>
> I got the computer equivalent of, "Make! We don' need no steenking make!" I
> tried man make, and got " No manual entry for make."
>
> Then I tried locate make, and among other things turned up many references to 
> imake.  I invoked man imake, but this left some question as to whether imake 
> is a direct replacement for make.
>
> Then I googled imake and read several entries, including the imake FAQ, and 
> what I think I learned was this:
>
> After invoking tar xvvzf to xxx.tar.gz, invoke imake -l (or -D?), xmkmf (to 
> create a make file from the imake file, then make install, and make clean.
>
> Is this the process? Or am I still in the dark?

Only use imake or xmkmf for source code that includes an Imakefile. imake 
generates a "Makefile" which can then be used by make (GNU gmake or BSD 
pmake depending on your system and imake configurations).

firefox does not need imake. Make sure you have GNU make installed. You 
will also need g++. Building firefox has many options for the many 
features.

Anyways, before you run "make" be sure to run ./configure first.



  Jeremy C. Reed

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