OpenManiak.com - CHECKINSTALL - The Easy Tutorial

Other CheckInstall
Last update: 30-01-2008

Checkinstall is an extremely useful tool that helps when installing software after their compilation.
When a software is compiled, the following well known commands are used:

#./configure
#make
#make install

There are two majors problems with this way of installing programs:

1.

2. The "make uninstall" command is very often not available and thus you cannot uninstall the program.
You don't have any tracking of the installed program.

All these problems are solved with CheckInstall, which replaces "make install" as shown below.

#./configure
#make
#checkinstall

Checkinstall executes the "make install" command, creates a Debian package and installs it with the "dpkg -i" command. This new Debian package is copied on the hard drive at the same time. You can use this package on another computer without having to compile the software again.
As the install has been done with a Debian package, it is now possible to use all the dpkg commands such as "dpkg -L" to see the installed files of a software or "dpkg -r" to uninstall a program very easily.
Please note that like "make install", the checkinstall command must be launched by the root user.

To install CheckInstall:

#apt-get install checkinstall