Help Third party app installation

[Derek Broughton]

Aart Koelewijn wrote:

> Derek, you are assuming the tar file is the source code for something.

No, I'm not.  I said "for the most part".  There are all sorts of other
possibilities, but a "tarball" is still most often source.

> This does not have to be true. I have also come across binary files, java
> source, java binary, shell scripts and others all packed in a tar or tgz
> archive. 

> That is why I advise to go to the top level directory and read 
> the Readme and/or Install file, in my experience (about 15 years) that is
> the only safe advise to give.

What's unsafe about saying "./configure; make; sudo make install"? (other
than the fact that if you're doing that when you don't know what's in
there, you probably shouldn't have downloaded it in the first place).  If
it's not a source tarball, that's not going to do anything.
-- 
derek