Mine the Harvest

Recently I have learned about a little Linux tool I wish I had become familiar with a very long time ago – the checkinstall program. I had an mistakenly assumed concept of what this tool did, believing that it checked or verified the installation, as in something one would run after using the usual ./configure && make && make install steps if you later wanted to verify everything was still where it ought to be.

Nope. And yet its so fun to make instant conclusions like that!

checkinstall is the bomb. Of course the slightest use of man checkinstall would have educated me, but it came to me through a colleague at work whom directed me to this wondrous gem.

With checkinstall you actually create your own .rpm or .deb packages which you can then install as an rpm directly.

There are several benefits to this:

As a package, it is now portable to other systems and can be very easily installed. It will simply install the compiled binaries and other support files in the various locations – same as make install would.

As an .rpm, when installed it will be recorded in the .rpm database. Future installs will be aware of it’s existence and locations of the various files it contains. This is NOT the case when you manually do a make and make install – so you later end up later with the database, unaware of what is on your system, reporting missing dependencies for items you in fact have installed.

This also allows for a clean removal of the package – as of course sometimes you discover after a make install that – suprise – make uninstall is omitted or does not work.

I highly recommend using checkinstall whenever you compile things locally. By making an .rpm you record the installation and can easily uninstall software, and of course you make your work portable.

You can backup save these .rpm’s for the day when you have to reinstall your OS – making it so easy to reinstall all those nifty things you custom compiled. Take all the time this save you for a nice trip to Belize.

Very nice indeed. I always though making .rpms – even simple ones – would be this painstaking process and certainly involve hours of learning, etc. This is where any lack of formal training or instruction in Unix / Linux shows up – a simple tool that has been right under my nose for quite a while, and I never even knew it!

Linux constantly amazes my for the diversity and extent of amazing tools placed at your finger tips. It’s a constant voyage of discovery learning new tools and methods.

Linux just rocks.

The Path of the Penguin is the higher road, and the true vistas to be found and enjoyed are there. As opposed to another popular OS claiming something along those lines.

So there you have it – use checkinstall ! It rocks !