How to Solve Configure: Error: Readline Library Not Found

aptcompiling

I have an Ubuntu 10.04 LTS server with a minimal install that I want to compile postgres on. With the minimal install the server did not have gcc so I had to do an apt-get install gcc but now I keep getting this error from the postgres ./configure.

configure: error: readline library not found

I can't seem to find the name of the package that contains the readline library. So I have two questions.

  1. What is the name of the package that contains readline?
  2. Is there some way given the error message above for me to find the associated package from its standard name?

Best Answer

You probably need to install libreadline-dev.

A quick way to search for packages in cases like this is to use a command like:

apt-cache search libreadline

This command will likely list multiple packages, but if you're interested in compiling things from source then the package ending in -dev probably contains the files the configure script is searching for.

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