Sencap

Sencap is a great ENCAP software manager for all your software installation needs. Encapping is a very efficient way to install your software from source tarballs. It creates private trees for your packages (bin, lib, man, share), however, it symlinks them to the system tree (e.g. /usr/local) for easy use. And when you are ready to uninstall, Sencap makes it quick, reliable and easy.

It is important to note that Sencap should be used to augment your default package manager, not replace it. Installing Sencap is very straightforward; it comes with generic installation instructions to guide you through the process. The `configure' shell script is used to guess the correct values for various variables to be used during compilation. Once those values are determined, it creates a 'Makefile' in each directory of the package as well as '.h' files containing system-dependent definitions. Additionally, it creates a shell script 'config.status' that you can run in the future to recreate the current configuration, a file 'config.cache' that saves the results of its tests to speed up reconfiguring, and a file 'config.log' containing compiler output (useful mainly for debugging `configure').

If you have to do anything unusual during compilation, you can consult the `README' for instructions on changing the configuration. If `config.cache' contains results you don't want to keep, you may remove or edit it. The file `configure.in' is used to create `configure' by a program called `autoconf'. You only need `configure.in' if you want to change it or regenerate `configure' using a newer version of `autoconf'.

To compile your package, start by running the `configure' shell script in the directory containing the package's source code. If you're using `csh' on an old version of System V, you might need to type `sh ./configure' instead to prevent `csh' from trying to execute `configure' itself. While running, `configure' prints some messages telling which features it is checking for. Once that is done, type `make' to compile the package. You can also run any self-tests that come with the package by typing `make check'.

After compilation, type `make install' to install the programs, and any data files and documentation. If you want to remove the program binaries and object files from the source code directory, type `make clean'. Finally, to remove the files that `configure' created (so you can compile the package for a different kind of computer), type `make distclean'. A `make maintainer-clean' target is also available, but it is intended mainly for the package's developers.

There you have it, a well-rounded software installation package with all you need to keep your software up to speed.