Before all, read this to know if you can compile Gambas successfully on your own system, and then the important notes !
Then, open a terminal window. For example xterm, or Konsole if you are using KDE.
Remember that you must install the following development packages : X11, QT3, KDE3, PostgreSQL, MySQL. The way to do that depends on your distribution.
Then, you must download the Gambas source package on your machine. For example, you can use wget in the terminal:
[linux@home ~]$ wget http://gambas.sourceforge.net/gambas-$(STABLE_VERSION).tar.bz2
Then, you must unpack the downloaded archive in a well chosen place. For example, in your home directory.
[linux@home ~] cd ~ [linux@home ~]$ bunzip2 gambas-$(STABLE_VERSION).tar.bz2 [linux@home ~]$ tar xf gambas-$(STABLE_VERSION).tar [linux@home ~]$ ls ... gambas-$(STABLE_VERSION) ...
A gambas directory has been created with the contents of the archive. Enter it !
[linux@home ~]$ cd gambas-$(STABLE_VERSION)
Then you can launch the compilation of the sources with the two following magic commands : configure and make.
The first command is configure. This command is used to analyze your system in order to adapt the compilation process. It is a script located in the source directory, so you could be obliged to add "./" before the command name to launch it.
[linux@home gambas-$(STABLE_VERSION)]$ ./configure ...
Note: if you want to compile a development version, type:
[linux@home gambas-$(DEV_VERSION)]$ ./configure -C
Many messages scroll before you get the prompt. If something wrong happens, you get an error message, and must go to the troubleshooting page to identify your configuration problem, before continuing.
If you have problems, you can disable component compilation by passing the following options to configure :
For example :
[linux@home gambas-$(STABLE_VERSION)]$ ./configure --disable-db-component
Note that if you forgot to install a development package, the components that need it will be automatically disabled. You will see a warning message in the output of the configure command.
When configure ends without any error, you can launch the compilation with make.
[linux@home gambas-$(STABLE_VERSION)]$ make ...
If something wrong happens during the compilation, you get an error message. It may be a configuration problem that the configure script should have detected, or an incompatibility with your system and/or compiler. I suggest to you to go to the mailing-list to carefully expose your problem with every detail.
Once compilation is terminated without problems, you can install Gambas. To do that, you must be root. So we are going to use the su command :
[linux@home gambas-$(STABLE_VERSION)]$ su -c "make install" Password: ...
Type the root password, and the installation proceeds. Everything is installed under /opt/gambas by default. If you want to specify another installation directory, you must use the --prefix configure option. Read the INSTALL file in the source directory for more details.
For example, to install Gambas under /usr, just type the following:
[linux@home gambas-$(STABLE_VERSION)]$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
Note that symbolic links are created in the /usr/bin folder so that Gambas programs are always in your path, and can be easily located by the development environment.
Of course, if you install Gambas directly in /usr, these symbolic links are not created.
Once everything is done, you can launch the development environment.
[linux@home gambas-$(STABLE_VERSION)]$ gambas
Or for the development version:
[linux@home gambas-$(DEV_VERSION)]$ gambas2
You are now entering the warp zone... ;-)