CheckInstall: Better way to install software compiled from source

27 May 2016
linux

I often need to install software that is not available in repositories. The only way to install such software is to download its source code, compile it and install obtained binaries. I used to do it like this:

cd software-source
./configure
make
sudo make install

No problem, so far everything seems to be fine. Problems appear when I want uninstall the software installed in such way because make install can do a lot of things such as copy files, create directories and symlinks, etc. So it can be tricky to find and remove all this things.

The solution I found is to use CheckInstall. Just install it with:

# Debian
apt-get istall checkinstall

# Red Hat
yum install checkinstall

And instead of make install use checkinstall:

cd software-source
./configure
make
sudo checkinstall

CheckInstall keeps track of all the files created or modified by an install command and automatically generate a Slackware-, RPM-, or Debian-compatible package that can later be cleanly uninstalled through the appropriate package manager:

# Debian
dpkg -r package-name

# RedHat
rpm -e package-name