Let's say you find a particular application that you'd like to install on your system. Maybe you need to run a very recent version of this program, but this most recent version isn't yet available in a packaging format such as rpm. Perhaps this particular application is only available in source form, or you need to enable certain features of the program that are not enabled in the rpm by default.

Whatever the reason, whether of necessity or simply just because you want to compile the program from its sources, this section will show you how.