Here's the background: I need to download some code form github but I don't know much about Linux. I ran the command git clone with the desired code and got it and stored it in a folder. Then, as instructed, I opened the folder to run make, which I was advised that would give me some complications. The main one is that I need to change the default compiler to gcc before running the command. From what I understood from posts I found is that I need to change or to edit somehow the common.mk file. The problem is I can't even find it, or acces it, or even know if it exists.
This is the question, how do I edit the common.mk file to change the default compiler? Or equivalently, if there is no need to go through the common.mk file to change the compiler, what's the way to change it? I've searched quite a lot, but as I said, I'm quite new to all this and don't understand the 90% of the technicalities used. Sites that have helped me a bit until now are this, which is quite short and doesn't explain much; and this, which for me is really difficult to figure out.
To explain my situation, I only know the most basic Linux commands like cd and things like that, I don't even know if there are other ways of running commands from somewhere else besides the cmd. All of the stuff that the second link explains, I can more or less understand them but don't know how to apply them on the cmd, or even if they can be applied via cmd. Any help is welcome.
Edit: The github from where I downloaded that said to change the default compiler gave this link as an explanation on how to do it, but I don't understand anything here.