From: janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com

On 24.10.2025 19:35, David Brown wrote:
> On 24/10/2025 15:27, bart wrote:
>>
>> However, it took me a while to find where it put the executable, as
>> the make process doesn't directly tell you that. It seems it puts it
>> inside the src directory, which is unusual.

Unusual for whom?

> It further appears that
>> you have to do 'make install' to be able to run it without a path.

Yes, sure; if you want to use an executable as a regular program
you have to install it at the (or at some) appropriate place.

I'd consider it a horror if I'd compile a source and any previous
installed version gets overwritten (or shadowed); even more so in
a multi-user system!

>
> I agree that putting the executable in "src" is a little odd.  But
> running "make install" is hardly unusual - it is as standard as it gets.
>  (And of course there are a dozen other different ways you can arrange
> to run the programs without a path if you don't like "make install".)

It is quite common that the executable file of a software package
is created in the directory where the sources reside. (I've just a
hand-full of third-party packages on my system but all do exactly
that. In my own projects I have typically also a two-step process;
some "make" (or alike) generation process (in the source directory)
and some "install" (or alike) installation or upload process.)

There's of course also larger projects that may have an organized
hierarchy of directories for system components and/or libraries.
Then the makefiles(-hierarchies) handle that, each in its scope.

For the use of executables or libraries there's the install step,
of course.

In professional contexts you don't want these steps combined.
After the build you want to pre-install it in an QA area for the
tests. Another step is the packaging to deliver the software
products. And the package can then be installed; first in the
next level QA test, later, after approval, at the production site.
For private, primitive, or toy projects these steps are usually
not (or not all) necessary. But even there it's typically not
the right thing to have the build and install step combined, as
explained initially.

But anyway I also wonder about bart that he couldn't find it;
maybe he's expecting some Windows "convention" on Unix? - If in
doubt I'm just typing 'ls -ltr' to see the latest files created
or directory that got updated to get a concrete hint on where
the software products have been generated.

Janis

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