Most software projects should install without much trouble under Sidious Linux, especially if the source code is available. If you would like to install a package, or are developing a package which needs to run under Sidious Linux, please read this section.
To use the default compiler, nothing special is needed. It is generally a good idea to compile packages with an installation prefix in the /opt/ directory tree, or your home directory. (Do NOT do that as root, since root's home directory disappears on a reboot! Create a regular user account with the adduser command.) Many packages that use GNU configure can be installed like this:
tar xjvf package-0.00.tar.bz2 cd ./package-0.00 configure --prefix=$HOME make make install
Compilation of some C++ projects may fail with the default compiler (2.95.3). Often, the only problem is that unknown compiler flags, only understood by newer compilers, are passed on the command line. The first thing to try would be to edit makefiles and remove the offending options. If a newer C++ compiler really is required, /opt/gcc-3.2.3 should be copied from the installation CD. Then add this to your path with:
export PATH=/opt/gcc-3.2.3/bin:$PATH
Be aware that problems may arise if you compile parts of your project with gcc-3.2.3 and others with gcc-2.95.3! Stick with 2.95.3 if you can. It is a very stable C compiler.
Sidious Linux lacks a functional dependency system. If you have a package with unknown dependencies, the best approach is often to try and install it and deal with the dependencies as they come up. This would be pain for complex projects that have many dependencies. If you have a package with known dependencies, you may check them against the manually maintained list of the components of a standard Sidious installation, in the following section.
The following is not a complete list of packages installed by the Sidious Linux CD - these are only those on which other packages might have dependencies. Even at that, it does not (yet) list specialized packages which are installed, such as cfitsio for astronomy applications.
| C Library | glibc | 2.2.5 | |
| C Compiler | gcc | 2.95.3 | 2.91.66 and 3.2.3 also available |
| C Debugger | gdb | 5.0 | |
| Assembler | binutils | 2.11.90.0.8 | |
| Assembler | nasm | 0.98.36 | |
| X-Window System | XFree86 | 4.2.0 | Includes X11R6.6 |
| Motif libraries | lesstiff | 0.92.32 | Plus Xbae 4.9.1 and Extensions 9.0.9 |
| Window manager | fvwm | 1.24r | Obsolete |
| Window manager | fvwm2 | 2.4 | |
| Gnome toolkit | gtk+ | 1.2.10 | |
| Database library | libdb | 3.3.11 | Used by sendmail |
| Database library | libgdbm | 1.8.0 | .so version is: 2.0.0 |
| TCL/Tk | tcl | 8.3.3 | |
| TCL/Tk | tk | 8.3.3 | |
| TCL/Tk | itcl | 3.2 | |
| GNU Configure | autoconf | 2.57 | |
| GNU Configure | automake | 1.7 | |
| libtool | libtool | 1.4.3 | |
| Shell | bash | 2.05a | |
| Shell | tcsh | 6.10.00 | |
| Bison | bison | 1.28 | |
| Flex | flex | 2.5.4 | |
| BZip2 | bzip2 | 1.0.1 | |
| cpio | cpio | 2.4.2 | |
| rdist | rdist | 6.1.5 | |
| rsync | rsync | 2.4.6si | patches to work with XFS |
| RCS | rcs | 5.7 | |
| CVS | cvs | 1.11.1p1 | |
| diffutils | diffutils | 2.7 | Needs large file support |
| fileutils | fileutils | 4.1 | |
| findutils | findutils | 4.1 | Needs large file support |
| Awk | gawk | 3.0.2 | |
| gettext | gettext | 0.10.37 | |
| grep | grep | 2.4.2 | |
| groff | groff | 1.17 | |
| ghostscript | gs | 6.51 | |
| gzip | gzip | 1.2.4 | Needs large file support |
| IJG JPEG library | libjpeg | 6b | .so version is: 62.0.0 |
| imlib | |||
| giflib | |||
| libpng | |||
| tiff | 3.5.7 | ||
| USB library | libusb | 0.1.7 | (static only) |
| GNU M4 | m4 | 1.4 | |
| GNU Make | make | 3.79.1 | |
| Curses library | ncurses | 5.2 | plus some patches |
| Readline library | readline | 4.2a | |
| Perl | perl | 5.6.1 | |
| PGPlot library | pgplot | 522 | |
| GNU sed | sed | 3.02 | |
| GNU tar | tar | 1.13.25 | |
| GNU Plot | gplot | 3.7 | |
| Termcap library | termcap | 2.0.8 | |
| textutils | textutils | 2.0 | |
| wget | wget | 1.8.1 | |
| zlib | zlib | 1.1.3 |