How to install *.tar.gz files on linux
Sometimes when using Linux you need to install a version which is not on your package manager or it's not available. In this tutorial we will explain how to install tar.gz files on Linux.
Files with the tar.gz extension are compressed files (gz) which containes many files (tarball). Linux software is usually shipped in tar.gz files which contain source code and required files to build the software. Usually you should use your package manager to install software in Linux, but sometimes you need to install software from source code.
Sometimes tarball files are crompressed with bz2, tgz or xz.
Step 1: Uncompress tarball
To open the tarball you can use the
tar command with the parameters
xf which will detect the compression type:
mkdir source_code # just in case we create a file for the extracted files cd source_code tar xf file.tar.gz # or bz2 or xz or tgz
Step 2: Compile source code
Most of the linux source code uses a Makefile to compile the whole project, but this could change from project ot project. The most common way to compile the source code is:
./configure make make install
./configure will check for software dependencies on your system. Then
make will compile the source code and create binary files.
make install will copy binaries to appropiate location in your OS to use later.
What to do if the source code is missing the configure script?
Sometimes source code misses the configure script, in those cases check project build documentation (usually on github wiki). Try to check if there is a
bootstrap.sh file or if the project uses autoconf.