Terminal problems please help

[CliveO]

I'm trying to install software from terminal.
I've just spent half a day installing items from Developer Tools, so now the command "make" is recognised by Terminal, but "compile" still isn't. My first challenge is to install fink; the instructions tell me to unpack, navigate into the folder in Terminal and type "./bootstrap.sh". Terminal tells me there's no such directory, but I can see the file.
Is "./" a command? I've seen it before in abortive attempts to use Terminal. Can somebody point me to the top secret location where all the Terminal programs are stored so I can install them (Ha Ha) and use the thing to compile and install programs rather than just rename files and create/delete directories.
Does anybody know of a resource that tell you how Unix works instead of giving you lines of instructions to copy which don't work if you're stuck with the default Terminal application?
Thanks
Clive

 

[rman]

First bootstrap.sh is a shell script. To run this little program you need to be in the directory/folder where it is located. Using ./bootstrap.sh, you are saying to run this program which is located in the directory/folder where I setting. That is the reason for the ./, which is the locate of the script.

Normally when you compile something you will use something like gcc, cc, CC, and perl to name a few. If you see compile, it should be a name of a script that contain the compiling options.

As for how Unix works you can search the net, or get your self a book on Unix.

 

[mac57]

Do you have gcc installed yet? That is what make generally uses for compiling.

./ is simply a way of identifying the current folder. Have you tried just typing in bootstrap.sh without the leading ./? ...howver, the ./ version should work. Are the permissions right for bootstrap.sh? Is it executable? Perhaps typing "sh <bootstrap.sh" might resolve the issue?

In Terminal, type "env", and look for the PATH variable. It will contain all the locations that Terminal looks when looking for programs whose names you have typed in. If you need to add to it, do something like:

PATH=$PATH:/new_path_element

Finally, I would recommend looking at DarwinPorts vs. Fink. I find it much better. See: http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/

 

[walkerj]

IIRC, the Developer Toolkit installs all the gcc stuff and some other utilities that allow you to compile the Darwin ports and other things that you would want to make from the command line, but your default environment won't necessarily point to where it puts all the binaries. I seem to recall having to manually add /opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin to my $PATH in my .bash_profile before I could start compiling things.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I needed to modify that before I could get on to bash-ing things about.

 

[mac57]

Here is my full PATH var (and I have been compiling software on my Mac, and building things with DarwinPorts for some time):

PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/Users/mac57/bin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin

I got this via the magic Terminal.app command:

env | grep -i path

 

[rman]

All you need to do to see your path is this:

echo $PATH

 

[mac57]

Thanks rman - I knew that! Been using Linux too long now; it is the opposite of the Mac paradigm; I tend to do things the complex way!