General questions on best method for installing Linuxcnc for software stepping.

Now keep in mind I probably screwed something up but when I finally got the dev tools installed and got the millkins.c to compile linuxcnc would not launch. I modified the .hal file to chancge trivkins to millkins_xyz and added the setp parameters. Linuxcnc still would not launch.
So then I rolled back to 2.7.8. removed millkins_xyx.ko and that got me up and running again.

So I tried to follow the method based on this page
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Contri...y_XY_skew_correction
I downloaded the latest dev image using the instructions on build bot
I then used

sudo halcompile --install millkins_xyz.c

This appeared to compile without errors but it was fast so I might have missed a prompt.
Then I tried launching linuxcnc it stated a message that it was going to reconfigure my config files to support joints and axies. After it did that linucnc crashed and if i remember correctly the error seemed to be about millikins_xyz not letting the math stepgen and a bunch of other files to open because of an "argument error" when I get home from work I'll try it again and post the entire error log file.
This error did not change when I changed trivkins to millkins_xyz.
Then I copied the millkins_xyz.ko file and saved it so that when I downgraded back to 2.7.8 I could try it out and if I recall correctly the error log read very similarly.

I wish that was the case but when I tried skipping that step linux would reply with something to the effect of unknown command halcompile once I installed the dev version halcompile worked.

yes but it was really weird, my linuxcnc-dev package was already updated from the beginning when I first installed linuxcnc but the halcompile command would not work. I tried everything I could think of including compiling from source until I finally gave up and tried using the build bot image once I did that halcompile worked. I have absolutely no clue as to why that made it happy but I am very new to linux so I'm probably off by 6 inches the 6 between my ears.

Tried that to and nothing. Same unknown command error. I have a hunch that the problem lies within the fact that I am using linux mint and it had a lot of packages that I need to manually install in order for linuxcnc-master to install without complint but it doesn't make sense as dev tools appeared to be updated before I did all of that updating.

Ok from my current state of 2.7.8 when I run sudo halcompile the terminal returns "command not found".
I didn't attempt updating to the dev version because I was running a very long part (8 Hours) that I modified in cad so that it would come out square. After I measure it in the morning and verify that it came out correctly then I'll upgrade and post the files(assuming it doesn't work).
on the plus side the part appears to be running nicely.