Building GPG from source code requires a C compiler and other development tools. Every distribution of Linux comes with gcc (the GNU C compiler) and all the other tools you need; but you will have to make sure they are installed. (We cannot explain how to do this for all of the different distributions of Linux. If you cannot figure out how to install the development tools with your version of Linux, then you should either call your vendor for technical support, or find someone in your neighborhood who can help you, possibly at a local Linux users' group.)
Once you have the development tools installed, the next step is to download the source code for GPG. You can get it from the GPG home page or from their FTP site. When you've downloaded it, you should have a file called ''gnupg-1.0.3.tar.gz''. The most recent version of GPG at the time of this writing is version 1.0.3. If a newer version is available when you read this, then you should use the newest version, and substitute the appropriate file names where necessary.
Then, you should extract the source code, with this command:
tar xzf gnupg-1.0.3.tar.gz
And then change to the GPG directory:
cd gnupg-1.0.3
If you have a newer version than 1.0.3, the name of the directory may be different.
Now build the program by typing:
./configure make
There are many different options you can supply when building the program, which are too numerous to cover here. If you have special considerations such as limited disk space, be sure to read the documentation that comes with GPG before building the program.
After a while, if everything goes well, you should be ready to install GPG. Become the root user if you aren't already:
su
And then type this command:
make installto install the software.
Now, you should have a program named gpg in your /usr/local/bin directory. You're ready to go!