Generally you can use the "build-dep" command of "apt-get" to fetch dependencies to a package. Use it like this:
sudo apt-get build-dep [package name]
Or more specifically for gvim:
sudo apt-get build-dep vim-gnome
After that you should be able to compile gvim/vim either without further intervention or with only small set of dependencies to resolve required by a newer version of gvim/vim that you are compiling.
As Marius noted one such dependency resolution is installing libssl-dev manually:
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
Enjoy!
Is is possible to build Ubuntu from source to get the same kind of benefit?
I am not sure about the benefits if you have fairly new hardware components but for the "Ubuntu from source" part of the question the answer is YES, you can build not only your favorite applications from source, but the entire operating system.
Here is how:
You need to install apt-build. Its a comandline tool like apt-get, but instead of downloading and installing the binary package, apt-build downloads the source code of the package, compiles it and then installs it to your system.
After you install it with
sudo apt-get install apt-build
you will be asked for an optimization level (medium is ok), whether you want to create an apt-build repo for APT (Yes) and a question about processor architecture (my intel i7 is considered core2 ). Of course all options can be reconfigured in this way:
dpkg-reconfigure apt-build
The above command offers two additional options for the gcc compiler and make builder. Their descriptions can be found in system manuals: man gcc and man make.
For a manual and available command options check
man apt-build
But the most useful are:
- apt-build update — updates repo list, (like apt-get update)
- apt-build upgrade — updates operating system, (like apt-get upgrade)
- apt-build install program — installs an application,(like apt-get install)
- apt-build world — something for hard-core users, it recompiles whole system!
For example:
Lets say you want to compile/install Gedit. Instead of apt-get install you just do
sudo apt-build install gedit
Apt-build makes use of deb-src entries contained in the /etc/apt/sources.list file so the compilation and installation processes are fully automatic (similar to emerge found in Gentoo). Apt-build downloads sources of the main application and its dependencies, compiles them, creates a deb package, and finally installs the package.
Some notes about apt-build world.
In my opinion don't attempt it, unless you have 24 or more hours available !
If so first thing you should, remove/disable/uninstall any third party applications (it better to do in a fresh install of Ubuntu) and then do :
sudo su
dpkg --get-selections | awk '{if ($2 == "install") print $1}'> /etc/apt/apt-build.list
exit
The above command will copy your full list of system packages to apt-build.list so that they can be compiled from source.
Open that file
sudo gedit /etc/apt/apt-build.list
and remove any GCC/G++ entry
Then you can do :
sudo apt-build world
I suggest to add two options — --yes and --force-yes — to make the rebuilding process fully automatic.
Best Answer
To build Vim you will need first to install all the dependencies. This could be done using
This will download and install a lot of packages that should only be needed to compile Vim. If you don't want to keep them, before running that command add this to
/etc/apt/apt.confThis will make all the packages installed with
build-depbe "marked to be autoremoved". So after you finished compiling Vim you can uninstall them usingsudo apt-get autoremove.After this, just proceed with the usual steps: