Thanks to the high standards of many open source projects, I rarely receive
compilation errors when ./configureing or makeing a project. When I do
receive compilation errors, though, 99% of them are due to a missing header
file / function. Ubuntu's apt-file program makes it extremely simple to track
down the package containing the header file / function needed by the source
you're compiling.
Installing apt-file on Ubuntu
Installaing and configuring apt-file is extremely simple.
$ sudo apt-get install apt-file
$ apt-file update # sudo optional
As hinted in the comment above, you have the choice of using sudo with apt-file. I prefer to not use sudo, but it's really just a personal preference.
Using apt-file to find the right package
Here's a real world compilation error you may come across if you're installing a Python library that uses native extensions:
...c:125: fatal error: Python.h: No such file or directory
So Python.h is some header file, and we need to find what package it belongs to. To search for the package containing this exact file, we do
$ apt-file -x search "/Python.h$" pypy-dev: /usr/lib/pypy/include/Python.h python2.7-dbg: /usr/include/python2.7_d/Python.h python2.7-dev: /usr/include/python2.7/Python.h python3.2-dbg: /usr/include/python3.2dmu/Python.h python3.2-dev: /usr/include/python3.2mu/Python.h
The correct package is either pypy-dev, python2.7-dev, or python3.2-dev,
depending upon which Python version you have installed. You can install the
package via apt-get and finish your compliation.
Let's analyze the apt-file call we did above. The -x flag indicates the
pattern string will be a regular expression. This is necessary because just
searching for "Python.h" will bring up results like
freecad-dev: /usr/include/freecad/Mod/Part/Gui/ViewProviderPython.h libsidl-dev: /usr/include/c/sidl_Python.h libsidl-dev: /usr/include/sidl_Python.h libvtk5-dev: /usr/include/vtk-5.8/vtkPython.h
(You can see this for yourself by running apt-file search "Python.h")
We then use the regular expression pattern "/Python.h$" to make sure we match the filename exactly (Note the / and the $ symbols).
Here's another example where things weren't so straightforward, but still end up being pretty easy thanks to apt-file and apt-cache.
Here I was initially attempting to compile Vim 7.3.
/tmp/vim73$ ./configure configure: loading cache auto/config.cache checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes checking for gcc... gcc checking whether the C compiler works... yes ... ... checking for tgetent in -ltermlib... no checking for tgetent in -ltermcap... no checking for tgetent in -lcurses... no no terminal library found checking for tgetent()... configure: error: NOT FOUND!
Compilation failed due to the absence of a function called tgetent(). We can
use apt-file to find the package containing this function.
$ apt-file search tgetent ncurses-doc: /usr/share/man/man3/tgetent.3ncurses.gz ncurses-doc: /usr/share/man/man3/tgetent_sp.3ncurses.gz
Unfortunately, only documentation packages were found instead of lib/dev
packages. We can still use this, though! We know the ncurses-doc package
contains documentation regarding tgetent(), so we can then conclude the
ncurses package, or some form of it, contains the function. So now let's look
for an "ncurses" package. To search for package by its name instead of its
contents, we use apt-cache instead of apt-file. We use the --names-only
flag to limit our search to only the name of the package and not its
description.
$ sudo apt-cache search --names-only "ncurses" libncurses5 - shared libraries for terminal handling libncurses5-dbg - debugging/profiling libraries for ncurses libncurses5-dev - developer's libraries for ncurses libncursesw5 - shared libraries for terminal handling libncursesw5-dbg - debugging/profiling libraries for ncursesw libncursesw5-dev - developer's libraries for ncursesw ncurses-base - basic terminal type definitions ncurses-bin - terminal-related programs and man pages ncurses-doc - developer's guide and documentation for ncurses ...
So which one do we choose? Applying the strategy explained above concerning
"lib"/"dev" and the simplest package name, our options are libncurses5 and
libncurses5-dev. Recall that "dev" packages are more likely to have the
function, so libncurses5-dev is our most likely candidate.
After installing the libncurses5-dev package, I was able to successfully
compile the project.
Is this really faster than Google?
That's a fair question, to which I answer "usually". If you only get
back doc packages from your apt-file search, I would go ahead and Google.
Thankfully, most of the time apt-file will return an obvious candidate.