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

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.

linuxcnc-dev is a package that you get from Synaptic that adds some development tools.
It is _not_ the same thing as the development version of LinuxCNC. (which you can get from the buildbot)

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.

MDM3D wrote: 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.

Maybe you were using a 2.6 version when "halcompile" was called "comp" ?

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.