How is building the GUI from source different from building monerod/CLI?

Question

Since I've been building monerod/CLI from source since before the GUI wallet was released, I already have a fully populated monero directory with my wallet and everything else that gets installed in the build. How do I build the GUI?

In this answer, I'm hoping to find out:

1. Whether the current monero directory is overwritten
2. In which directory the GUI is built
3. Whether the GUI build will install a new monerod and new monero-wallet-cli
4. Whether running the GUI will try to run a separate instance of monerod, even if it's already running
5. The obvious: the few steps to cloning the repository up to running make

(I'm running Linux 16.04.2 LTS)

Answer 1

The monero GUI source code and installation guide (including Ubuntu 16) can be found here https://github.com/monero-project/monero-core

To answer your questions by referring the guide.

1. It installs in the directory where you download/cloned the source and build it. So it will not overwrite anything as long as you download it on a an empty folder.

2. On the sub folder where it is built. Specifically ./build/release/bin/monero-wallet-gui

3. It's not installing monerod and monero-wallet-cli. Its not in the source code.

4. I'm not sure but probably not. It may be the same in windows which does not ask to run monerod if there is one already running.

5. You use git to clone the repository. The installer has a build.sh which does everything for you including the make.