[Environment Setup 9] Build GNU Scientific Library using Make

Make a new directory for GSL and navigate to it

$ mkdir gsl

$ cd gsl/

Copy the downloaded tarball and extract it

$ cp ~/Downloads/gsl-2.7.tar.gz .

$ tar -xzvf gsl-2.7.tar.gz

Navigate to the extracted directory

$ cd gsl-2.7/

Configure the build and specify the installation location

$ ./configure --prefix=/home/tuxriders/gsl/gsl-install

Build the library

$ make

Copy the built library files (in both static and shared formats) to the specified location

$ make install

Go back to the home directory, make a new directory for testing GSL, and navigate to it

$ cd

$ mkdir test

$ cd test/

Create a new file called bessel.c

$ touch bessel.c

Compile the Bessel calculation program using the headers of GSL

$ gcc -Wall -c -I/home/tuxriders/gsl/gsl-install/include/ bessel.c

Link the compiled program to GSL and GSL BLAS libraries

$ gcc -L/home/tuxriders/gsl/gsl-install/lib/ bessel.o -lgsl -lgslcblas -lm

Update (overwrite in this case) LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable to point to the installation location of GSL for guiding the compiled program to find the shared libraries

$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/tuxriders/gsl/gsl-install/lib/

Run the compiled program

$ ./a.out