Re: Trouble installing "make"

[Paul D. Smith]

%% John Heath <address@hidden> writes:

  jh> I am learning C and using DJGPP under MSDOS.  DJGPP works fine and
  jh> for me and I am trying to progress to using "make".

  jh> I read the introductory tutorials for make (but these dont cover
  jh> download).

Which introductory materials?

  jh> From ftp:\\ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/make/ I chose to download
  jh> "make-3.79.tar.gz"

You should rather choose make-3.79.1.tar.gz; that's the latest version.

  jh> which with short DOS name became "make-3~1.gz".  To unzip this I
  jh> used " gzip -d -N make-3~1.gz " which decompressed producing a
  jh> single file which seems to contain lots of different objects
  jh> including makefiles and c-source code

  jh> 1. How do you separate these objects? 

This file (*.tar.gz) is a compressed tar file.

Once you uncompress the file with gzip, you need to use tar to extract
it into its constituent files.

I know there's a version of GNU tar available for Windows/DOS; maybe at
the same site you downloaded DJGPP?  (If you have GNU tar you can
actually decompress and extract it at the same time, rather than using
gzip first, but since you already used gzip that's OK too :).

Once you get it, you can run this:

  tar xf <filename>

It will create a subdirectory called "make-3.79.1" (or whatever DOS
shortens that to), containing all the files.

  jh> 2. How do you compile "make" from these when you dont have "make"
  jh>    already?

After the above, see the README.DOS file for help building.

  jh> 3. Can you download "make" as an executable?

I think so, but the FSF doesn't make prebuilt binaries available.
However, I'd look at the DJGPP archive for something like mak3791.zip or
something like that.

HTH.

-- 
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 Paul D. Smith <address@hidden>          Find some GNU make tips at:
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 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist