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So I just installed Ubuntu for the first time and I was trying to install Dmenu, and I opened the readme.txt to find this:
Installation
Edit config.mk to match your local setup (dmenu is installed into the /usr/local namespace by default).
Afterwards enter the following command to build and install dmenu (if necessary as root):
make clean install
What exactly is this telling me to do?
It's telling you to make sure config.mk has the settings you want. It looks like config.mk has the install path, as well as a few other options that more advanced users may want to tweak.
As CelticWarrior pointed out, you can install dmenu without having to worry about source code with sudo apt install dmenu or sudo apt install suckless-tools.
If you still want to know how to install dmenu from source code, here's some hint that I tried to install dmenu2 from source under xubuntu 20.04 focal. Dmenu2 is a patched version of dmenu. Which also works with dmenu of course.
The commands and explanations:
The bitbucket repo of dmenu2 uses mercurial, so...
sudo apt install mercurial
Check original dmenu package details to see from which repository is installed
as mentioned dmenu is a virtual package name so look for suckless-tools:
apt show suckless-tools
The interesting line is:
APT-Sources: http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/universe amd64 Packages
And especially the universe repository
Uncomment, if necessary, the line in /etc/apt/sources.list (span your favorite editor)
sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list
The line we are looking for is a deb-src for the universe repository, it might look like:
deb-src http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal universe
update the packages list
sudo apt update
and let the packaging magic do the rest, this will install all the needed dependencies to build the packages:
sudo apt-get build-dep suckless-tools
now simply let the build tools do the job:
cd path/to/cloned/dmenu
make
You should have an fresh compiled ./dmenu in your local directory.
See inside the Makefile the actions that will be performed:
install: all
mkdir -p $(DESTDIR)$(PREFIX)/bin
cp -f dmenu dmenu_path dmenu_run stest $(DESTDIR)$(PREFIX)/bin
chmod 755 $(DESTDIR)$(PREFIX)/bin/dmenu
chmod 755 $(DESTDIR)$(PREFIX)/bin/dmenu_path
chmod 755 $(DESTDIR)$(PREFIX)/bin/dmenu_run
chmod 755 $(DESTDIR)$(PREFIX)/bin/stest
mkdir -p $(DESTDIR)$(MANPREFIX)/man1
sed "s/VERSION/$(VERSION)/g" < dmenu.1 > $(DESTDIR)$(MANPREFIX)/man1/dmenu.1
sed "s/VERSION/$(VERSION)/g" < stest.1 > $(DESTDIR)$(MANPREFIX)/man1/stest.1
chmod 644 $(DESTDIR)$(MANPREFIX)/man1/dmenu.1
chmod 644 $(DESTDIR)$(MANPREFIX)/man1/stest.1
To finally install it to the destination configured (PREFIX = /usr/local in config.mk)
sudo make install
Have fun!
Want even more fun? check rofi instead, a drop in replacement for dmenu, and many more.
Which is also packaged already:
sudo apt install rofi
ls | rofi -dmenu
Note, selecting 'suckless-tools' instead of 'dmenu'