I was trying to install a program that I had to compile before I installed but when I did the make install or ./configure it came back with an error saying that "cc was not found in $path"

what the hell is that? I'm sure somebody here can point me in the right direction or tell me how to do it or tell me if I have a compiler on the system or how to check for it.

Mandrake has a software manager on it (show installed and not installed programs) and I couldn't find anything there about a compiler.

somebody HELP!!!!