Ubuntu – How to remove all build dependencies for a particular package

aptaptitudepackage-management

When I want to compile something from source in Ubuntu/Debian, I usually get build-dependencies by running "sudo apt-get build-dep PACKAGE_NAME" in the terminal.

They are (usually) useless once the compilation job is done.

So, how do I remove all build-dependencies for a particular package?

Best Answer

To find out the build-dependencies of a program you can run apt-cache showsrc pkgname and that will list, amongst other information the Build-Depends, which are often files ending in -dev; although it is worth checking if any of the files (particularly those not marked -dev) are required by other programs. You could find this out by using apt-cache depends file and apt-cache rdepends file. The following example is for Shotwell:

apt-cache showsrc shotwell

Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 7.0.50~), m4, valac-0.16 (>= 0.15), libgee-dev (>= 0.5.0), libgtk-3-dev (>= 3.0.11), libexif-dev (>= 0.6.16), libsqlite3-dev (>= 3.5.9), libgexiv2-dev (>= 0.4.1-1build1), libgnomevfs2-dev (>= 2.24.2), libgphoto2-2-dev (>= 2.4.2), libsoup2.4-dev (>= 2.26.0), libxml2 (>= 2.6.32), libunique-3.0-dev (>= 1.0.0), libwebkitgtk-3.0-dev (>= 1.1.5), libgudev-1.0-dev (>= 145), libdbus-glib-1-dev (>= 0.80), libraw-dev (>= 0.13.1-2), libusb-dev, libjson-glib-dev (>= 0.7.6), libgstreamer0.10-dev (>= 0.10.28), libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev (>= 0.10.32), python-scour, libunity-dev, liblaunchpad-integration-3.0-dev (>= 0.1.36), librest-dev

There is a command to do it all in one go at the webupd8 site, but I have found that it doesn't seem to work reliably with the current version of Ubuntu in that it seems to remove too much. I tried it with Pinta and it suggested removing the entire mono library. There is discussion of such problems with using commands like the webupd8 one at Launchpad. Be very careful when experimenting with any 'solutions' you might find.

It is a shame that there is no autoremove command for build-dep installed packages.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to remove Dolphin and all of its dependencies

Removing a package including no longer needed package dependencies can be done with

apt-get remove --autoremove <package>

(see also this answer)

However if Dolphin was installed as a dependency of another package, we need to remove this package first.

In case we need to keep any package depending on Dolphin we cannot remove Dolphin.

Ubuntu – What’s the difference between apt-get install and apt-get build-dep

The short version.

apt-get install

installs a new package, automatically resolving and downloading dependent packages. If package is installed then try to upgrade to latest version.

apt-get build-dep

Causes apt-get to install/remove packages in an attempt to satisfy the build dependencies for a source package.

The command sudo apt-get build-dep packagename means to install all dependencies for 'packagename' so that I can build it". So build-dep is an apt-get command just like install, remove, update, etc.

The build-dep command searches the local repositories in the system and install the build dependencies for package. If the package does not exists in the local repository it will return an error code.

For installing matplotlib see To Install matplotlib on Ubuntu

^{Source:ManPage & Ravi Saive}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to remove Dolphin and all of its dependencies

Ubuntu – What’s the difference between apt-get install and apt-get build-dep

Related Question