Some projects only give you .tar.gz, what am I supposed to do with them? Is this what people call building from source? Am I supposed to move it to /opt and extract it in Debian based distros? Does this also work on Arch based ones?
Some projects only give you .tar.gz, what am I supposed to do with them? Is this what people call building from source? Am I supposed to move it to /opt and extract it in Debian based distros? Does this also work on Arch based ones?
What if it doesnt have any instructions?
What do you mean about using the AUR?
Hmm, then it sort of depends on the project. And I mean the AUR might already have it compiled for you or in an easier form for Arch users. But if you are using Debian and your your question was “will this compile the same way on Arch and Debian” then the answer is simply yes!
What project are you trying to compile?
I am trying to install Foxit Reader and WineGUI for a friend on Manjaro, I found the latter on the AUR I think, so I should run
yay install wine-gui-git?You can do that, but like the other users said, you should be wary of obscure packages because the AUR can be used to spread malware. You can check what the script does to make sure.
And I’d be surprised if you need WineGUI for that, but maybe it’s specifically necessary for how they want to use it. You could also just install WINE and use it to run the program; it will open the program’s GUI.
You can usually find the instructions by extracting the archive and looking for anything with a
.mdextension or with a filename writtent in all CAPS (ex:README,README.md,INSTALLING).