Going Beyond BLFS

The packages that are installed in this book are only the tip of the iceberg. We hope that the experience you gained with the LFS book and the BLFS book will give you the background needed to compile, install and configure packages that are not included in this book.

When you want to install a package to a location other than /, or /usr, you are installing outside the default environment settings on most machines. The following examples should assist you in determining how to correct this situation. The examples cover the complete range of settings that may need updating, but they are not all needed in every situation.

Expand the PATH to include $PREFIX/bin.
Expand the PATH for root to include $PREFIX/sbin.
Add $PREFIX/lib to /etc/ld.so.conf or expand LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include it. Before using the latter option, check out http://www.visi.com/~barr/ldpath.html. If you modify /etc/ld.so.conf remember to update /etc/ld.so.cache by executing ldconfig.
Add $PREFIX/man to /etc/man.conf or expand MANPATH.
Add $PREFIX/info to INFOPATH.
Add $PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig to PKG_CONFIG_PATH.
Add $PREFIX/include to CPPFLAGS when compiling packages that depend on the package you installed.

If you are in search of a package that is not in the book, the following are different ways you can search for the concerned package.

If you know the name of the package, then search FreshMeat for at http://freshmeat.net/. Also search Google at http://google.com/. Sometimes a search for the rpm at http://rpmfind.net/ or the deb at http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages#search_packages can also lead to the website for the package.
If you know the name of the executable, but not the package that the executable belongs to, first try a google search with the name of the executable. If the results are overwhelming, try searching for the given executable in the Debian repository at http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages#search_contents.

Some general hints on handling new packages:

Many of the newer packages follow the ./configure && make && make install dance routine. Help on the options accepted by configure can be obtained via the command ./configure --help.
Most of the packages contain documentation on compiling and installing the package. Some of the documents are excellent, some not so excellent. Check out the homepage of the package for any additional and updated hints for compiling and configuring the package.
If you are having a problem compiling the package, try searching the lfs archives at http://search.linuxfromscratch.org/ for the error or if that fails try searching google. If everything else fails, try the blfs support mailing-list/news-server.

Tip

If you have found a package that is only available in .deb or .rpm format, there are two small scripts rpm2targz and deb2targz that are available at http://downloads.linuxfromscratch.org/deb2targz.tar.bz2 and http://downloads.linuxfromscratch.org/rpm2targz.tar.bz2 to convert the archives into a simple tar.gz format.