The preferred way to install wipe is to use something like stow, and put
it in /usr/local/.

Debian (dpkg):

Build an rpm, then use alien to make a deb. I have removed the Debian
directory, since (my version of) wipe is not part of Debian.

Redhat (rpm):

1. tar jxvf wipe*.tar.bz2 || (bunzip2 -c wipe*.tar.bz2 | tar xv)
   cd wipe*/; cp wipe.spec /usr/src/rpm/SPECS/
   cp wipe*.tar.bz2 /usr/src/rpm/SOURCES/

2. cd /usr/src/rpm/; rpm -ba SPECS/wipe.spec

3. rpm -ivh RPMS/`find . | grep -v noarch`/*wipe*.rpm
   ls SRPMS/

   to build a source rpm:

   rpm --rebuild *wipe*.src.rpm

Tarball:

to install as root:

   ./configure; make install

or to install on a per user basis:

   ./configure; make install_home

to uninstall:

   make uninstall
or
   make -f Makefile.in remove

from ./configure --help:

--enable and --with options recognized:
  --enable-wall        compile with -ansi -pedantic -Wall -Werror
  --enable-debug       compile with -g
  --enable-efence      same as debug, but link the binary with the
		       electric fence

make targets:

make:
		compile standard wipe binary w/ -O3

make debug:
		same as ./configure --enable-debug

make efence:
		same as ./configure --enable-efence

make install:
		you must be root to run this. this will install all man pages
		and put the compiled and stripped wipe binary in /usr/local/bin

make install_home:
		install wipe for personal use in ~/bin/. does not install man
		pages.

make info:
		display file info and link data for wipe binary.

make clean:
		clean binaries from source tree.

see README and LICENSE for more information.