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1. GNU Make is the de facto standard build tool for software projects developed on and for Linux environments. It relies on a makefile, by default named Makefile, which contains the rules (including the sequence of commands, environment variables, options) that tell Make how to generate an executable from a source code.
2. The configure script is often used to automate the retrieval of system and user information before the compilation and linking steps are performed. It generates a tailored Makefile starting from a general template and the collected information.
3. CMake, not to be confused with GNU Make, is a meta-build tool that uses system-independent and compiler-independent configuration files to generate specific build scripts for a range of system-specific build tools, including GNU Make.

Steps

The process of building software starts with obtaining and unpacking its source code into a directory, which from now on is referred to as $ROOT_DIR.

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The software you have built is now located at the installation path. See the Next Steps section for what to do next in order to use it.

Example

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To keep your software organised, we recommend the following locations for your manual software installations:

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This example shows how to build gromacs/2021.4 on Setonix using CMake. Although the application is available through Spack, sometimes users need a custom build with particular patches or flags.

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