Any way to make compiling software from source less painful?

Tried to compile Elinks and I got an error saying there was no rule to build a required file. I looked at the Makefiles and found that they were including other Makefiles that didn't exist, or listing them as being in the wrong directory. This always happens. Only programs I've been able to build from source without problems were OpenSSL, Frotz, and Aircrack-ng. Everything else I either get dependency errors or get compatibility errors with the source code that I have to go in and fix manually or get cryptic errors that I can't make heads or tails of. Seriously, fuck Make.

Attached: Makefile.png (800x600, 25K)

Install Gentoo

Ironically, that requires compiling software from source.

Never had that problem, works on my machine.

Sorcery by SOURCE MAGE GNU+Linux

It is easy if you have the dependencies set up correctly. Also, check the tarball you are compiling is a release version (so you don't have to generate the configure script)

Really? 'Cause I'm literally typing
>./configure
>make
>make install
just like it says in the README file and I get fatal errors. It seems unlikely that I'm doing something wrong considering that I'm literally just following the directions they gave me.

Gentoo helps a lot.

> Seriously, fuck Make.
Agreed, but you can only solve this on your own projects and/or lessen it by having an intermediate layer like Gentoo's ebuilds.

If the developers aren't retarded and packaged everything correctly just follow their build steps.

Any errors you get are likely because you're missing a dependencies or on a wrong version of something.

I believe him and you both.

The problem is that these things are usually made so poorly that you can have problems between distros and of course dependency versions and so on [which will not get detected by the scripting of these, which was probably what the tool's authors intended but rarely ever gets done to a larger extent].

Refer to the corresponding Gentoo ebuilds for pointers or just use Gentoo.

Have you tried sudo make install pretty sure that requires root privileges. I actually haven't compiled the specific software you are talking about.

also why do you just install it with your package manager? The arch wiki says there is a package for it. Does your distro not have it in it's repos or something?

portage does it for you

It's not really irony when compiling software from source without as much build scripting pain is the goal.

Ok Jow Forums, how long have you been waiting to post this unironically?

I was trying to install it for Cygwin actually. Cygwin only has a very limited selection of packages that you install by selecting those packages and then reinstalling Cygwin. If you want to use something that hasn't been ported to Cygwin, you have to get the tarball and build it from source. I have done this successfully with a legacy version of OpenSSL, so I know this is a viable method. Some packages just don't seem to be constructed in a logical fashion.

everyday

use something minimal like suckless shit, alpine, or bsd

welcome to the unix C culture
it's not really the language itself why people hate it

Arch's AUR handle it very nicely, surprisingly nice actually.

cygwin is legacy garbage, no wonder it doesn't work. actually install linux or at least use Windows subsystem for Linux.