Mac OS X for Unix Geeks

Compiling Unix Source Code

Many of the differences between Mac OS X and other versions of Unix become apparent when you try to build Unix-based software on Mac OS X. Most Unix-based open source software uses GNU autoconf or a similar facility, which generates a configure script that performs a number of tests of the system—especially of the installed Development Tools—and finishes by constructing one or more makefiles. After the configure script has done its job, you run the make command to first compile, and, if all goes well, install the resulting binaries.

Tip

Most tarballs will include a configure script, so you do not need to generate it yourself. However, if you retrieve autoconf-managed source code from a CVS archive, you will have to run autoconf.sh manually to generate the configure file.

In most cases, performing the following three steps is all that is needed to successfully compile a Unix-based application on Mac OS X after you have unpacked the tarball and changed to the top-level source code directory:

./configure
make 
make install

Warning

Mac OS X web browsers are configured to invoke StuffIt on compressed archives. So, if you click on a link to a tarball, you may find that it gets downloaded to your desktop and extracted there. If you’d prefer to manage the download and extraction process yourself, Control-click or right-click on the link so you can specify a download location.

The following sections deal with issues involved in successfully performing these steps. Determining how to improvise within that three-step procedure reveals some of the differences between Mac OS X and other Unix systems.