How to install tar file (jhead) on Mac or Linux machine

Get the source

wget "http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead/jhead-2.97.tar.gz"

Untar the source

tar xzf jhead-2.97.tar.gz

Or, get and untar the source in one step

curl "http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead/jhead-2.97.tar.gz" | tar xz

Now you have a directory called jhead-2.97. Enter that directory and run make.

cd jhead-2.97
make

This will compile the code and link an executable for you called jhead.

Some makefiles have install targets. This one does. To install the executable,

make install

You'll probably need to run that as root. Now your program is installed and ready for use.

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In this case, the install target looks like this:

cp jhead ${DESTDIR}/usr/local/bin/

If you ever run into a program without an install target in its makefile, just know that you have to get any executables into /usr/local/bin and any libraries into /usr/local/lib (or other appropriate locations.) Sometimes there are also other files you have to worry about such as documentation files (e.g. man pages), configuration files, etc.

Xcode 4.3 moved make to /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/make. You can install make to /usr/bin/ by downloading the command line tools package from Xcode's preferences or from developer.apple.com/downloads (which requires a free developer account but not Xcode).

If make install results in an error like cp: directory /usr/local/bin does not exist, just run mkdir /usr/local/bin/.

You could also install Homebrew and run brew install jhead.