Software local installation

This page gives an example of a local installation of a software, i.e. a software that will be only available to yourself. For simplicity we assume here that the software you want to install is available as a single binary file.

To be executed from anywhere the binary must be placed in a directory contained in your PATH environment variable. We use here a directory called "bin" in your home directory:

$ mkdir ~/bin

Then, edit your ~/.bashrc file to add the newly created directory to your search path by adding this line:

export PATH=~/bin:$PATH

Then reload your .bashrc to take into account this change:

$ source ~/.bashrc

Now, you can simply copy your binary to ~/bin and it will be available from anywhere for execution:

$ cp /path/to/downloaded/my_binary ~/bin

Finally, make sure your binary is executable:

$ chmod +x ~/bin/my_binary