checkinstall: building your own package for your distro

http://www.asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/index.php

I don't know if you know it, but I found this utility very helpful.
Basically, from time to time you need to install some SW from source, if you can't find desired package with your favorite distro - problem is, how to uninstall or upgrade such SW...
Checkinstall can help you here.
Basically you do:
./configure
make
checkinstall (instead of make install)

and check install will create Slackware, RPM or Debian compatible package, which you can afterwards install with your installation manager (rpm, dpkg ...)

This is of course much better, because your distro 'knows' whats installed on your machine ...

Try it out, i use it a lot on my CentOS machines

 

huh..might have to give this a try.
i'm using ubuntu so deb packages are easiest for me to use..
this will be helpful for when i can't find software using deb.
thanks

 

You can also use the package 'alien' to convert between DEB and RPM packages. Nice find, though.

 

I used it recently to install ffmpeg and codecs.

 

I use checkinstall to make mplayer, ffmpeg-mt and x264 builds from the current trees so that I can get multi-threaded x264 decoding going on my media center.

 

hi there,

just be carefull about what for and when you use checkinstall.

I once did a package of the compat wireless intel wifi drivers and, for me, it worked wonders. Since my girlfriend had the same laptop, I installed the package in her laptop, and there I had a problem: it installed MY grub.cfg file into hers, so the lappy didn't boot anymore... Don't know why the compat wireless should care about anyting grub related, but with grub2 it wasn't as easy to fix grub as it always had been with the standard grub..

Also, I've had times where checkinstall would had conflicting files and you had to force install the package.

 

This is a bit strange, i'd say . Are you sure, that it didn't ask you to install grub in some form of dependency? That could be the trouble....

 

Checkinstall basically wraps the "make install" process. If make install would have copied or edited the grub.conf file, then it would add that to the package.

 

I've used Alien to go from RPM to DEB, does it do the reverse? I've got my 64 bit scanner drivers in Deb files I need converted to RPM for my Fedora 12.....

 

http://linux.die.net/man/1/alien

Man pages are fun, kids

 

Heh, RTFM.

 

RTFM is last resort.... Now all I have to do is find Alien...not in current configured Fedora repos....looking........thanks Pita btw.

 

I like that CentOS, a lot.....feels so stable, and has a certain 'old school linux' aura about it I just couldn't make it work for me for my desktop use, so went with Fedora 12, but seems very stable so far...