Intercom uses the GNU AutoConf suite of utilities to compile and install the source. If you are familiar with GNU AutoConf, you should have no trouble. If not, you may wish to read the INSTALL contained in the base directory of the source distribution.
When you download Intercom, you will have a .tar.gz file. It has a name similar to intercom-0.15.tar.gz. The first thing you need do is unpack the file. If you have a relatively modern Unix system, the command tar -zxf intercom-0.15.tar.gz should unpack the source. The unpack process will create a directory named something similar to intercom-0.15. Change to that directory by entering cd intercom-0.15 and continue to the following section.
After unpacking the source distribution, you must configure the source for your particular system. This is done with the command ./configure. Simply executing ./configure is often sufficient and will examine your system and configure the source appropriately. However, configure does have options which modify its behavior. One of the most important of these is the --help switch which prints a list of valid configure options. Running ./configure --help will print this usage summary.
One option which many people like to change is where Intercom gets installed. By default, this is /usr/local. Binaries are placed in /usr/local/bin, man pages in /usr/local/man etc. To change this option, simply execute ./configure with the --prefix option. For example, to install Intercom into your HOME directory, enter ./configure --prefix=$HOME.
Some tasks which Intercom must perform can be quite resource intensive, especially on older hardware. If you encounter problems like recording overruns, you may wish to use these methods to optimize your build of Intercom.
There are two options which can be passed to configure to control how Intercom is optimized. The first, is the --with-cpu=type. This tells the compiler that Intercom is being compiled for the specified CPU type. The resulting binary should not be executed on any other CPU platform except that for which it was compiled. For a list of valid CPU types, consult your compiler documentation. Some examples of valid CPU types are i386, i486, i586 (pentium), and i686 (pentiumpro). For example, for a version of Intercom optimized for Pentium class systems, you would enter ./configure --with-cpu=i586.
![]() | Warning: The --with-cpu option is only known to work with the GNU C compiler (GCC). Further, the available CPU types vary depending on the version of gcc being used. Consult your documentation for details. |
The other swich controling optimization is --enable-optimize. This switch enables compiler optimizations specific to your compiler version and CPU type if the --with-cpu option is used. Warning: This option enables certain experimental compiler optimizations, it is recommended that this option only be used if absolutely necessary.
Once you have configured the source, it needs to be compiled into binary form. To do this, simply execute the make command. If the make completes without error, you are ready to install the program.
The final step is to install Intercom on your system. If you chose to install Intercom in the default location (/usr/local), then you will most likely need to become the root user. Once you are in a position where you have write access to the installation path, simply type make install. Intercom will be installed onto the system and you are ready to go.