Dev Packages

From AMSN

Linux and the package management systems

You have to know that in linux usually you don't come around to sites and download installers/packages, unless you don't want the latest-bleeding-edge version. So if you want a piece of software, you ususally rely on the package management system of your distro.

A package management system is a structure with which your system installs and keeps track of installed software.

On debian-based linux distributions (distros), the main package tool is apt.

apt-get is the client application interfacing to the package server (or repository) on which all the packages are stored.

To install a package from repository, you digit apt-get in the terminal, followed by a command and the names of the packages you wish to install.

apt-get is run from the command line, but there are also graphical tools (like synaptic)

Installing development packages

A development package is a library (of source code) needed to succesfully compile into binary form (executable) other packages.

Development packages are usually distinguishable for a -dev or -devel suffix in their name.

For instance, in Ubuntu, dev packages for tcl8.4 and tk8.4 (needed to compile aMSN from SVN) are called tcl8.4dev and tk8.4dev.

The command build-dep of apt-get downloads and installs all the build dependencies of the given packages, i.e. all the libraries needed to succesfully ./configure