Previous Next Contents

2. Choosing your installation method

There are two ways to install glibc. You can install the libraries as a test, using the existing libraries as the default but letting you try the new libraries by using different options when compiling your program. Installing in this way also makes it easy to remove glibc in the future (though any program linked with glibc will no longer work after the libraries are removed). Using glibc as a test library requires you to compile the libraries from source. There is no binary distribution for installing libraries this way. This installation is described in Installing as a test library.

The other way to install is using glibc as your primary library. All new programs that you compile on your system will use glibc, though you can link programs with your old libraries using different options while compiling. You can either install the libraries from binaries, or compile the library yourself. If you want to change optimization or configuration options, or use an add-on which is not distributed as a binary package, you must get the source distribution and compile. This installation procedure is described in Installing as the primary C library.

If you are installing glibc 2 on an important system, you should not install it as your primary library. Use the test install, or better, try it on a spare system.


Previous Next Contents