Make is a general purpose workflow program, usually used for compilation. But it can be used for anything.
When you do something like "make all", the make program executes a rule named "all" from a file in current directory named "Makefile". This rule usually calls the compiler to compile some source code into binaries.
When you do "make install", the make program takes the binaries from the previous step and copies them into some appropriate locations so that they can be accessed. Unlike on Windows, installation just requires copying some libraries and executables and there is no registry requirement as such. In short, "make install" just copies compiled files into appropriate locations.
Answer from sharjeel on Stack ExchangeMake is a general purpose workflow program, usually used for compilation. But it can be used for anything.
When you do something like "make all", the make program executes a rule named "all" from a file in current directory named "Makefile". This rule usually calls the compiler to compile some source code into binaries.
When you do "make install", the make program takes the binaries from the previous step and copies them into some appropriate locations so that they can be accessed. Unlike on Windows, installation just requires copying some libraries and executables and there is no registry requirement as such. In short, "make install" just copies compiled files into appropriate locations.
make install does whatever the Makefile author wants it to do. Typically, by this point, it is too late to change the install directory, as it is often known earlier, during the build, so help files and configuration files can be referenced with the correct pathnames.
Many projects use the GNU Autotools to try to improve their portability among hardware and operating system differences. (Different Unix variants use slightly different headers for declarations of functions that are slightly off the usual path -- except most programs need one or another of the ones declared in different locations.)
When a project does use the Autotools, the normal mantra to install it is:
./configure
make
make install
The ./configure typically allows you to use a command line option like --prefix /opt/apache or something similar to specify a different pathname. /usr/local/ is a common default prefix. It is far easier for locally built software to live in one place and distribution-provided software to live in the "main directories": /usr/ /bin/, and so on. (Packagers are very careful to never touch files in /usr/local/ -- they know it is exclusively for system administrators.)
Anyway, the ./configure --prefix /path/to/new/prefix will set a variable in the Makefile that is available when compiling the program, modifying the manual pages so they point to the correct locations for files, modifying configuration files, etc. So make will build the software specifically for the install location you want and make install will install it into that location.
Most programs can run even without the final make install step -- just ./program_name will often start them up. This is definitely a per-project thing -- some, like postfix, qmail, etc., are made up of many different moving pieces and rely on them all working together. Others, like ls or su might be self-contained enough to execute fine from the directory they were built in. (This is not often useful -- but sometimes very useful.)
However, not all projects use the Autotools -- they are huge, complicated, and miserable to maintain. Hand-written Makefiles are much simpler to write, and I personally think just distributing a simple Makefile with configuration variables available is a lot easier on developers and users both. (Though the ./configure ; make ; make install mantra is really easy on users when it works.)
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[Noob Question] What does make install really do.
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Run the command:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
Chances are you will need things like gcc to actually do the building so you might as well install those as well. The build-essential package will install other tools used along with make.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install make
(-y = answer 'yes' to any prompts)
Check the installed version:
make -v
The commands that are executed by make install (or any invocation of make) are defined in the Makefile (and files included by the Makefile). For simple programs, you can just look for a line install: and see the commands in the lines below. But makefiles can also be quite complicated and scattered across various subdirectories. For details, see the manual for make, or an introduction to make.
As @Romeo Ninov wrote, you can also use the command make -n install so see what commands would be executed. Beware that for larger makefiles this output may not be accurate, and if you haven't built the program yet it will likely show you all the commands to build before showing the commands to install.
If no file arg ist passed to make , make looks for a file named Makefile in current dir. With the switch -f an alternative file can be passed to make. See man make for more information. By the way: make is one of these such good old Unix tools so try to get familiar with it ...
Why do that many projects recommend to push compiled binaries to the filesystem root?
edit Ok. I might have been wrong. My /usr/local ist empty. If stuff only gets installed there, my argument is invalid. I still feel pretty insecure about doing a make install, because it at least could conflict with the system installation.
Thanks for answering. /edit
I have a folder ~/usr where I push all compiled stuff. I then do cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/usr/ or ./configure --prefix ... and then install that without sudo. Some big projects I compile even have their own prefix.
Sure you have to tell your users to have ~/usr/bin in your PATH. I also added that to my LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH. But IMO that should be a default thing to do for Linux users (who compile stuff).
Polluting your distro installation with random crap is a sure way to get issues later. Its far worse then anything you can do to install Software on Windows.
I mean compiling a bleeding edge kicad, inkscape or jpeg-xl is easy. But will probably trash your system if you already have an older version installed.
(Some projects tell you to build a distro package and sudo install that. Much better, but I still prefer having the binaries in my own prefix. Also a lot got better, since many big projects publish daily snapshots as Appimage or similar.)
edit2 I was of course talking about a single-user system for users who sometimes like to test bleeding edge software. Not Multi-user sytems. Not Grandma, who's not allowed to install stuff. edit
When you run make, you're instructing it to essentially follow a set of build steps for a particular target. When make is called with no parameters, it runs the first target, which usually simply compiles the project. make install maps to the install target, which usually does nothing more than copy binaries into their destinations.
Frequently, the install target depends upon the compilation target, so you can get the same results by just running make install. However, I can see at least one good reason to do them in separate steps: privilege separation.
Ordinarily, when you install your software, it goes into locations for which ordinary users do not have write access (like /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin). Often, then, you end up actually having to run make and then sudo make install, as the install step requires a privilege escalation. This is a "Good Thing™", because it allows your software to be compiled as a normal user (which actually makes a difference for some projects), limiting the scope of potential damage for a badly-behaving build procedure, and only obtains root privileges for the install step.
A lot of software these days will do the right thing with only make install.
In those that won't, the install target doesn't have a dependency on the compiled binaries.
So to play safe, most people use make && make install or a variation thereof just to be safe.
Hi !
I'm sorry for the noob question but I don't manage to find a proper makefile to understand what the install target does by myself.
But apparently, what I understood is that make builds the program executable and make install just moves the executable to the right location, right ?
So that means a software installation is basically just moving an executable to the right location in a computer ? 🤔
Avoid making local installs into system directories. The system directories eg /usr, are reserved for the package management system to use. By definition, if you are doing make install that means you are making a local install, and if you need to do sudo make install that means you don't have permission to wherever you are writing.
So, if you are getting permission errors with make install, check and see whether you are trying to install into system directories, and install into /usr/local or similar instead. /usr/local is reserved for local installations. You may need to give yourself permission to write to /usr/local, but this is usually easily done. On Debian this can be done by adding yourself to the staff group. Better still, find or create a binary package, and install that instead. That way you can easily keep track of installed packages and obtain the other benefits of package management.
Note that the package management system conversely does not install into /usr/local, per the FHS. See Section 9.1 of the Debian Policy Manual- File system hierarchy for an overview.
As has been answered above, sudo make install lets you install the files in directories which are otherwise read-only to you as a user.
The problem I can foresee is that at a later date you may want to uninstall or upgrade the program. If you still have the source code directory tree then a make uninstall will uninstall the program for you but if, as many other typical users, you had deleted the source code directory tree then you are out of luck. And since you have not installed the program using a package management system, you may also be unable to uninstall the program that way.
The best way to install such programs may be to install them in your home directory. Pass the option --prefix=/home/<user>/<some>/<directory> to ./configure. This will allow you to use make install instead of sudo make install since /home/<user>/<some>/<directory> is writable by you. Also uninstallation is a snap -- rm -rf /home/<user>/<some>/<directory>