Preparing for dwm install

Question

I am preparing to install dwm.
I uderstand I have to install from source if I want to be able to cutomise the wm.
From what I have read (for example here: http://www.xsnake.net/howto/dwm/dwm-eng.php) I would do the following;
Download dwm from their site;
wget http://dl.suckless.org/dl/dwm/dwm-5.8.2.tar.gz
cd /path/to/dwm-5.8.2.tar.gz
tar zxvf dwm-5.8.2.tar.gz
make clean install (as root)
cp config.def.h config.h
tweak config.h then;
make clean install (as root)
Is this an accurate summary?

Answer 1

Don't install it without tweaking:
ancleessen4 wrote:
Download dwm from their site;
wget http://dl.suckless.org/dl/dwm/dwm-5.8.2.tar.gz
cd /path/to/dwm-5.8.2.tar.gz
tar zxvf dwm-5.8.2.tar.gz
make clean install (as root)
cp config.def.h config.h
tweak config.h then;
make clean install (as root)
Because you're not using a package manager and you don't want to clutter your /usr/bin directory, you could try not "installing" it at all.
Just type make not as root, it will put the binary in the current directory (the source directory)
then after you set up your own ~/bin directory (mkdir ~/bin and adjust your PATH variable in .bashrc: PATH=~/bin:$PATH) symlink the binary to a place you can launch it:
ln -sf $PWD/dwm ~/bin
You could even forgo those last two steps, and every time you want to run dwm (which is probably only in .xinitrc), just put the source directory and binary name:
~/dwm-1.2.3/dwm &