How to recompile programs for new Linux?

[Tommi]

Yo!

Newbie questions...

I have been told that in order to make a program run smoothly in Redhat 9 which is actually made for Red Hat Linux 7.2 you need to recompile that program. How to make this?

Is there a true need to recompile program if it is made for redhat 7.2 to make it run smoothly in redhat 7.3 for example. I there so big diffrence between these two releases?

And if I upgrade my X server to latest release will my programs run after that...or is there once again need for recompiling?

-Tommi

[suexec]

What you are describing about the RedHat 9/7.2 programs would appear to be their binary RPMs. RPMs compiled for one version would not (for the most part) not work in a different version because binaries would be linked against different libaries. Sometimes (more often than not) when you try to run something using different libraries, it may not even run. If it does run, sometimes it would seg fault.

RPMs for 7.2 may work in 7.3. It really depends on what that RPM is linked against. 7.2 and 7.3 aren't too different, so sometimes you may be able to get away, but like I mentioned earlier, it depends on the libraries linked against.

When you update your X server, you are probably updating your X libraries. Some programs may run, but some may break. Usually X doesn't change too much (more like additions), so you probably don't need to recompile those apps (stuff like Mozilla, Gimp, etc).

[Tommi]

So...if I have a source and I recompile that redhat 7.2 program to run in redhat 9 I will be successful...right?

Please tell if you know any good tutorials for this operation for true newbies...:-)

-Tommi

[suexec]

Right, but only if you can successfully compile it under RedHat 9.

Sorry, I don't know of any tutorial site. You may try googling for compiling SRPM. In RedHat 9, I think they changed the way RPMs are built. You should man rpmbuild