AutoDeb Automatically Installs Dependencies Needed To Build Software, Making Compiling A Lot Easier [Ubuntu / Debian]

AutoDeb is an experimental script which completely automates compiling and installing software created using autoconf (most programs). It can either directly use the archived source code (.tar.gz or .tar.bz2), or a folder where the application was unpacked or downloaded from svn, bzr, etc. Once the software is compiled, a .deb file is automatically created and installed using checkinstall.


This script is very interesting because it automates the configure process by automatically installing the dependencies needed to build software. That works by running "./configure" and tracking all of configure's attempts to access files. When configure fails, AutoDeb uses AutoApt (more info on AutoAPT) to find out what package needs to be installed and then it runs configure again.

The AutoDeb wiki page explains why it is better than AutoApt:

Contrary to AutoApt, AutoDeb does not just install every file that 'configure' happens to peek at. Instead, it lets 'configure' run and fail, at which point it installs only the last package that 'configure' required, and repeats the process.

Using AutoDeb

Once you download (actually copy the script code to a file called autodeb.sh) AutoDeb - download link at the end of the post-, make the script executable:

sudo chmod +x autodeb.sh

And then use it like this:

sudo ./autodeb.sh --gnome /path/to/software.tar.gz

You can replace "gnome" with "kde" and "/path/to/software.tar.gz with a folder location instead of an archive.



[Video] I've created a small video with AutoDeb in action, just to see how easy it is to use:




To learn how to create a distributable .deb package, see our "How To Create A .DEB Package [Ubuntu / Debian]" post.


Download AutoDeb | More info and concept

Make ./configure Tell You Everything Missing Or Failed [Linux]

When trying to compile something from source in Linux, there may be lots of dependencies missing. Running the ./configure command will only tell you one missing dependency. Then you must run ./configure again, install another missing dependency, run it again and so on.

However, you can make ./configure tell you everything that it's missing or failed, running it only once. For this, use the following command:

./configure -n > config.txt

Then check the config.txt file for all the lines that say no, missing, or failed.

The -n will run configure but nothing will actually be changed. You can also use ./configure -h - it will give you the options.

[thanks to the tip: StanTweedle user @ reddit]