Installing alternative version of make

I needed to downgrade from make-3.82 to make-3.81.

First I downloaded and compiled make-3.81. I used the –program-suffix=3_81 option for configure to identify this version of make.

$ ./configure --program-suffix=3_81
$ make
$ su -c "make install"

Fedora Alternatives
First rename the original make:

$ mv /usr/bin/make /usr/bin/make-3.82
$ mv /usr/bin/gmake /usr/bin/gmake-3.82

Create alternatives for the orignal and the new one. The priority can dictate which is loaded.

# alternatives --install /usr/bin/make make /usr/bin/make-3.82 10
# alternatives --install /usr/bin/make make /usr/local/bin/make-3.81 20

And that’s it! However, it was suggested to me that this isn’t the best solution. When make gets updated by Fedora it will blow this away. I could instead look at Environment Modules on Sourceforge.