I’ve got a question about where all the data gets stored, after i build something from source. I know that “it depends”, but maybe you can help me with this example. When i build the jellyfin media player client, it looks like this:

mkdir ~/jmp; cd ~/jmp
git clone https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv-build.git
cd mpv-build
./use-mpv-release
./update
echo -Dlibmpv=true > mpv_options
./rebuild -j`nproc`
sudo ./install
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmpv.so /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmpv.so.1
sudo ln -sf /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmpv.so /usr/local/lib/libmpv.so.2
sudo ldconfig
cd ~/jmp/
git clone https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-media-player.git
cd jellyfin-media-player
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local/ -G Ninja ..
ninja
sudo ninja install
rm -rf ~/jmp/

Please correct me if I’m wrong: a directory named jmp gets created, all the raw code gets cloned into it and then it gets compiled. After that… well, the jmp directory gets removed, since i don’t need the raw code anymore.

Sometimes, i got a simple directory with an executable, like building ffmpeg from source. If you scroll down to Updating FFmpeg it says:

rm -rf ~/ffmpeg_build ~/bin/{ffmpeg,ffprobe,ffplay,x264,x265}

Now can just follow the guide from the beginning.

So, i am guessing all the data from ffmpeg was stored in one place.

Where does the jellyfin media player go? I am somewhat familiar with the linux filesystem, i found the executable in /usr/local/bin/, but its hard for me to understand, where the rest of the data goes, after building the jellyfin media player in case i want to remove “everything” (application-data, logs, ect.). Is there a good way to retrace, where different parts of an application went? Or do I still have the wrong idea about how linux handles applications thanks to >15 years on Windows (%APPDATA% and so on)? Is really every application-data stored in that one executable? I hope you understand, what i mean. On windows, there are special programs, that help you to completely uninstall another program, since all the files get spread out to like 50 system-directories…

Please be kind to me, i am still learning. I know several developers, non of them using linux and i would absolutely love, to help them shipping their applications to linux. Not today, not tomorrow but i am on it 🙂