Question

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What should Linux/Unix 'make install' consist of?

I’m making a program that can be invoked from the command line, like ./prog arg1 arg2. I was wondering, how can I make it so that I can run it from anywhere on the system? I know that I could put prog into /usr/bin/, but what if my program needs resources from its install directory (that can be wherever the user downloaded it)?

Answer 1

put the directory in which your program resides into the path environment variable or move your program into one of the directories already in path (usually requires superuser permission, which I gather you don’t have for then you wouldn’t ask this question).

to add a directory to the front of the search path and have the system refresh its database on tcsh, say

setenv "my/directory:"$PATH
rehash

on bash, I think, it’s

PATH=/my/directory:$PATH
export PATH

(no need to rehash). Note that the above commands put your directory at the top of the search path, i.e. these will be searched before any other. Thus, if your program is called “gcc”, then your program will be executed rather than the GNU C compiler. Alternatively, you can add your directory to the end of the search path, in which case your program will only be picked up if no other program of the same name is found in any of the other directories in the search path.