Linux: Need help installing ERF utility

[Legacy_henesua]

               I am relatively green using Linux (I am runing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS) and so don't understand how to install a downloaded program via commandline.

I need help installing the command line ERF Utility.

I have downloaded. Dumped the following files in SRC in /usr/local/src/erf/

• erf.c
• erf.h
• GNUmakefile
• Makefile

I own /usr/local/src/ and /usr/local/src/erf/

I have tried 'make' and received this feedback:
cc -g -O2 -Wall   -c -o erf.o erf.c
erf.c: In function ‘build_resource_list’:
erf.c:496:9: warning: variable ‘count’ set but not used [-Wunused-but-set-variable]
cc -o erf erf.o

then i tried 'sudo checkinstall' and got a bunch of feedback, but the pertinent is the following which I also get with 'make install':
make: *** No rule to make target `install'.  Stop.

****  Installation failed. Aborting package creation.

Cleaning up...OK

Bye.

As you canb see I don't know what I am doing and so could use some help.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Stupid mistake. I moved the executable to a directory defined in my path, and i can access the command.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Skildron]

               sudo checkinstall usually would be the right thing to do if you don't want to install any software you built (compiled) yourself without your package management system (dpkg/apt in case of Debian and its derivates, like Ubuntu) knowing about. That could be important if there are files that already exist in your system and would be overwritten by software not from your distro repositories. checkinstall supervises what a 'make install' on some newly compiled software would do and builds and installs a debian package from the result it gets. That's why checkinstall did not work on the erf utility: the makefile has no 'install' target and so 'make install' throws an error. You were on the right track, but with software as simple as the erf utility, checkinstall usually is not necessary. It's entirely different when the software is more complex and consists of lots of individual files and executables.

HTH
Greetings
Skildron
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Thanks. I'll file that info away for future reference. Its going to take time to be competent with Linux.