[lug] configure && make && make install

[Jeff Schroeder]

Hey all,

Like any good open-source guy, I do a lot of "rolling my own" 
software... which means I'm always downloading source and compiling it 
myself.  The issue I run into time and again is how to install 
everything, then save it off in an archive so I can re-install it on 
another (identical, or nearly so) box without having to re-compile it.

So I do the standard

./configure --prefix=/usr/local && make

and everything gets configured, compiled, and built.  Then I do

make install

and hundreds of files get dumped into /usr/local.  The problem is, how 
do I tar up just the files from this particular package, so I can then 
copy the tar file to another system and un-tar it into /usr/local?  
Obviously it's not practical to tar the entire /usr/local area...

I've tried a couple of approaches over the years, none of which are 
ideal:

1) After installing, do a 'find /usr/local -mmin -10' to figure out 
which files were dropped into /usr/local in the last 10 (e.g.) minutes.  
There are so many drawbacks to this it's embarrassing.

2) After doing 'make', create an empty /usr/local directory and THEN do 
'make install'.  Everything in /usr/local is what I want... but many 
times the install procedure itself depends on files and libraries in 
/usr/local.

3) 'make install >& install.txt' and then edit 'install.txt' to figure 
out which files were copied.  The install script typically shows 
everything it's doing, but not always.  Miss a few key files, and your 
archive is useless.

I wondered if anyone has insight into how I can accomplish this "poor 
man's package management" quickly and easily.

TIA,
Jeff

P.S. Please, let's not get into the whole RPM thing.  I just want a 
quick TAR file to move around.