How to compile a project on GitHub

In today's open source community, GitHub has become an important platform. GitHub is a cloud-based code hosting platform that allows users to store, manage, share and collaborate on the development of their code on the platform; at the same time, GitHub has also become the hosting site for many popular open source projects today. Various useful open source codes can be found on the GitHub website, through which we can learn code implementation and even contribute to its development. However, some projects do not directly have compiled executable files. When compiling these open source projects, Git version control tools like github are used.

Next, we will introduce how to compile projects on GitHub.

The first step is to get the source code

Find the projects that need to be compiled on GitHub and download them locally. GitHub provides many ways to obtain source code:

1. Clone using git clone

For most projects, the git clone command is a good way to obtain the source code code. You can click the "Clone or download" button directly on the project homepage, and then copy the URL that appears in the window. Then, in the folder where you want to store the source code, open the terminal and enter the following command:

git clone [url]

Here, [url] refers to the url copied above, which will download the source code of the project to in the current directory.

2. Download the project to local from a specific branch

Sometimes, we may only need the code of a specific branch, such as the development version and the stable version. You can do this by specifying the branch name (for example, master) to be downloaded at the end of the command. Assuming that the branch we need to download is named master, then enter the following command in the terminal:

git clone [url] --branch master --single-branch

A single unconventional git repository may not have a master branch. In this case, replace it with the name representing whatever branch or tag you launched.

No matter where you download the source code from, once the download is complete, you can compile them into an executable file.

The second step is to install the compilation tools

Compiling a GitHub project requires a compiler and compilation tool chain. How these tools are installed depends on your operating system. For example, under Linux, you can run the following commands to install the gcc compiler, g compiler and make tool:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Alternatively, you can also use the official compilation tool chain to install:

1. Mac OS X and iOS: You may need to install other compilation tools and dependent libraries. Many projects provide scripts for installing these dependent libraries. These scripts are often called dependency scripts or configuration scripts.
2. The third step, compile the project
3. After completing the first and second steps, we can compile. The compilation method depends on the source code you downloaded, and different projects may require different compilation commands. The following are some of the most common compilation methods:

Makefile

Under Linux systems, in addition to using the GCC tool set to compile source code, you can also use make Tools build Makefile. Makefile is a file used to automate code compilation and installation. Most open source projects provide Makefiles. To compile the Makefile, please run the following command in the source code directory:

make

If you need to clean up the compilation environment, use the following command:

make clean

1. CMake

CMake is an open source build tool that supports cross-platform. CMake will automatically generate Makefiles related to the build system, and these Makefiles will be used to compile the project code. To build a project using CMake, please execute the following command:

cmake .

The execution process may require adding parameters based on specific conditions. Additional parameters include specifying the addition of other switches, which can be viewed with cmake --help.

2. Autotools

Autotools is one of the mainstream build tools in Linux. It builds through the "configure" file in the repository. If you want to compile, you need to run the ./configure command in the source code directory. When executing ./configure, it will check whether your system meets the required dependencies and compilation tools; if a dependency or tool is missing, the ./configure command will give a prompt.

Visual Studio

It is very common to use Visual Studio to compile source code under Windows systems. First, open the project's solution file (usually a .sln file) through Visual Studio, and then execute "Build" -> "Build Solution" to build the solution. If an error occurs, you can view the details in Visual Studio's error list.

The above are some of the most common compilation methods. As long as you follow the readme files and instructions for each project, you should be able to successfully compile and generate an executable file.

4. Summary

GitHub is a powerful code hosting platform that allows us to share, learn, optimize and create powerful and ready-to-use code. However, some GitHub projects do not have compiled executable binaries, so we need to use various compilation tools to compile them. If you encounter compilation problems, you can refer to the steps and guidance described in this article.

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