Cattleman wrote: ↑Fri Apr 06, 2018 9:56 am
I need to install Sleepyhead software for Linux Mint 18x but I don't know how. It seems that I must build from source however, I don't know how to do that since I am an inexperienced user. Can anyone tell me what to do?
Welllll.....
FIrst, you have to make sure you have Build-Essentials installed; you can do that through Synaptic. Now, do you know if it's a 32 bit or 64 bit program? If it's 32 bit you also have to install ia32 to get the necessary libraries.
Ok, so I'm guessing you have a tarball (.tar; .tar.xz; .tar.gz. or .rar) open the directory it's in and double click and Engrampa or File-Roller should open, and have a file folder in it. In your file manager go to your home directory; I create one called "Test" to put software I need to compile. You can grab the folder in the archive manager and drag it into your new directory.
Go into the directory created when you dragged the extracted directory over, and look for a file README or INSTALLATION. This will give you any parameters that need to be built-in while it's compiling. these are modifierscalled 'configure'. You can right-click. select "open a terminal here" and in the terminal enter
and often it will give you a list of options to include. Once you determine what you need, if anything, type in
and it should run through a script. Watch for any "If you want x feature, build with use --(feature)" for any extras that can be built in. You can run ./configure as many times as necessary.
If it exits without error, it may tell you at the end what the next step usually is:
This could take quite a while depending on the size and complexity of the program.
If all goes well and it does not show an error, such as "make failed: no recipe for make-all"

then enter
and if all goes well your new program is installed. You do the 'sudo' because it probably need to install into directories you don't have user access to, so this allows it to copy portions into the proper directories.
Good luck! It sounds daunting, but for those of us who aren't programmers watching a program compile is pretty cool!