To compile the C programs from the sources,
first download one of the source packages (either
<packagename>.zip
or <packagename>.tar.gz,
whichever format you prefer) and extract it into some directory.
Since most archives contain multiple directories (most packages are
very modular and share source code with other packages), extracting
it to a new, empty directory may be a good idea. However, multiple
packages can be extracted without harm into the same directory,
since jointly used sources have the same version in all packages
(provided they were downloaded at the same time).
For all C programs makefiles for GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows
are provided. The GNU/Linux makefiles are generally called
makefile, the Microsoft Windows makefiles are called
<packagename>.mak.
To compile a (set of) program(s) on a GNU/Linux system, make sure
that GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection/GNU C Compiler is installed.
Then change directory to <packagename>/src
and call
make all
on the command line. With the command
make install
all programs are copied to $HOME/bin. The two commands
can be combined into
make all install
To compile a (set of) program(s) on a Microsoft Windows system,
make sure that Microsoft Visual Studio C/C++ is installed,
including the command line tools (which are needed to compile
with the help of a makefile). Note that the
Community Edition
of this C compiler can be obtained (perfectly legally) free of
charge. Then change directory to <packagename>/src
and call (in a Microsoft Visual Studio command line window)
nmake /f <packagename>.mak all
This command is also contained in a file make._at, which
can be renamed to make.bat to make it executable. The reason
for not naming it make.bat directly is that many mail programs
do not allow archives with executables (including batch files) to be
attached to emails. I also received some evidence that some firewalls
may exhibit a similar behavior: they do not let a user download an
archive with an executable file in it. Using a name not ending in
.bat circumvents the problem, but unfortunately requires a
user to rename the file to use it.
There is no installation command for Microsoft Windows. To install
the programs simply copy them into the directory in which you want to
use them, or to a directory that is listed in your PATH
environment variable.