how to turn source code into debian compatible driver

[Pekka Paalanen]

On Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:23:52 +0000
James Robb <james at gearedinteractive.ca> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I have download this file:
> http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-input-synaptics/snapshot/xf86-input-synaptics-1.7.99.1.tar.gz
> 
> under the impression it is the packaged code I need to compile the
> latest updates to the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package for ubuntu
> 14.04.
> 
> I have managed to run:
> ./configure
> ./make
> ./make install
> 
> all successfully, but with the results from these commands, I don't
> see a compiled driver anywhere that I can inject into my own system.

Hi,

if you didn't pass --prefix to ./configure, it probably defaults
to /usr/local. ./configure --help will tell, what the defaults are.

'make install' (if it succeeded; /usr and /usr/local are usually
writable only for root) already put all the files under the defined
prefix. Depending on various things, that may have been enough or not.

If prefix was /usr, you have probably overwritten files installed by
your distribution, which is usually bad, since the actual files in the
file system are not anymore the ones that your distribution's package
manager thinks they are, and can be confusing. If prefix
was /usr/local, I suspect Xorg server does not look for its modules
under there.

Sorry I cannot tell you what is the "right" way, it is totally
distribution specific and depends also on your personal practices on
how "hacky" system you can live with. You might have better luck asking
on Ubuntu related channels, or looking for PPAs or other Ubuntu package
repositories that might already have it packaged.

If you really want to manually put the files in place, you could use a
prefix that is an empty directory under $HOME, and see what files
appear there. On a live system, the prefix would usually be /usr, so
you can compare and see what would go where for real, but note that
distributions might have slightly different standards for locations.


Thanks,
pq