I use ~/local for compiling packages without root. It emulates
/usr/local, basically. So sometimes it might have .pc files etc in
corresponding pkgconfig/ in there or .so files in corresponding lib/.
I do this because I almost always don't have root, because I work on
tildes primarily (tilde.cafe to be specific) so yeah. If a package is
written in go or similar where building would be easy, the basic
workflow is this:
cd ~/local/src
git clone git@example.com:user/repo
cd repo
make PREFIX="$HOME/local" install
If all goes well the binary would be available at ~/local/bin.
For apt packages there is a higher chance of build failing and most of
them need other dependencies (plus some other historical reasons idk) so
I don't use ~/local/src[1], here's the general workflow:
cd ~/Downloads
apt source pkgname
cd pkgname
ls -A
less INSTALL
./configure --prefix=~/local
make PREFIX=~/local
make install PREFIX=~/local
And most likely it would complain about some package not found in the
configure step, in which case I woukd repeat the steps for that package.
Eventually (if I hadn't given up yet), the binary would be sitting in
~/local/bin nicely.
Sometimes the package needs a lot of dependencies, in that case it may
take up a shit ton of disk space, so I would pack it in a .tar.gz so it
can be saved for future use.
For meson projects:
cd ~/local/src
git clone git@example.com:user/repo
ls -A
meson setup build
meson compile -C build
meson install -C build --destdir ~/local
rsync ~/local/usr/local/ ~/local/ -avr
rsync ~/local/usr/ ~/local/ -avr && rm -rf ~/local/usr
I don't use meson often so I'm unaware of a way to easily specify
PREFIX, if any.
So that's my life of getting stuff installed without root. Thanks for
coming to my ted talk. One day I'll probably copy this entire commit msg
and make it into a blog post.
