I have Slackware installed on my computer, and I install a lot of software from source. Now I want to install ffmpeg from source just to recompile it with some more options. But I already have ffmpeg installed on my computer, so what's gonna happen? Is it going to overwrite my old install or is it going to create new files, and if so how can I differentiate between the two installed versions. Also if there is a better way to recompile a programs on Slack let me know, because i'm very interested.
New source install over existing one
compiling;software installation;ffmpeg;slackware
If you use the configure, make, make install routine to install software under any Linux distro, then the new version will usually overwrite the previous. The only caveat is that if the newer version happens to change the install location or names of certain files then you may end up with the old version or parts of the old-version remaining on your computer.For this reason, it is not advised to install programs in this way on Slackware. The recommended practice is to create a .txz or .tgz package which can be installed with the standard Slackware package installer installpkg. This also means that you can cleanly uninstall the package with removepkg or upgrade to a new version with upgradepkg. Many scripts for compiling and creating packages, including one for ffmpeg, can be found at SlackBuilds. Running the provided script with the sources in the same directory will compile and produce a .txz.Most Slackware users make heavy use of Slackbuilds to install non-official software.