The Free World: CheckInstall – The Source Installer’s Saviour.

I just received an email from a GNU/Linux user show listener who has pointed me to something veeeeery interesting.

When speaking of installing applications on a GNU/Linux box, I frequently lament that installing from a source tarball using the configure/make/make install process is a double-edged sword. On one hand you generally get a nice compact binary that runs fast because it was compiled for your system. On the other hand, since it wasn’t a package, you lose the ability to remove it cleanly via your distro’s package management system.

Enter CheckInstall.I want to be clear that I haven’t tried this application yet, but it sounds so incredibly useful that I wanted to get it out here as soon as possible. From the CheckInstall homepage:

A lot of people has asked me how can they remove from their boxes a program they compiled and installed from source. Some times -very few- the program’s author adds an uninstall rule to their Makefile, but that’s not usually the case. This is my primary reason to write CheckInstall. After you ./configure; make your program, CheckInstall will run make install (or whatever you tell it to run) and keep track of every file modified by this installation, using the excelent installwatch utility written by Pancrazio ‘Ezio’ de Mauro (p@demauro.net).

I’ll be playing with CheckInstall in the near future and doing a show or a bit on a show about it.

Thanks Paul from Manotiba. Canuck w00t!