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

apt

On the apt-get man's page, one can find this:

install pkg(s)
This option is followed by one or more packages desired
for installation. Each package is a package name, not a fully
qualified filename (for instance, in a Fedora Core system, glibc would
be the argument provided, not glibc-2.4.8.i686.rpm).
All packages required by the package(s) specified for installation
will also be retrieved and installed.
[…]

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

It sounds like both of those are trying to satisfy dependencies, but I had different results while installing matplotlib with each of those: apt-get intall didn't work with my subsequent pip install matplotlib in my virtualenv, while apt-get build-dep did*.

* Yeah, I needed to install matplotlib in a venv, but pip couldn't resolve some of the dependencies, so I lazily used apt in order to solve it

Best Answer

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}

Install Python 3.x packages in a Python virtual environment in 16.04 and later

Install Python 3 virtual environment creator

sudo apt install virtualenv python3-virtualenv

Create a Python virtual environment for python3. You can only install python3 packages inside this Python virtual environment. If you also want to install Python 2.x packages, then you need to make another Python virtual environment.
```
virtualenv -p python3 env  
source ./env/bin/activate
```
The new Python virtual environment for python3 will be created in the env directory which is located in the current directory.

Install Python packages.

cd /path/to/env/ # env is the python3 virtual environment's directory
source bin/activate
python3 -m pip install first-package-name next-package-name last-package-name

This is a new python3 virtual environment with the latest version of pip3, so installing Python packages in it will work great.

Install Python 3.x packages in a Python virtual environment in Ubuntu 14.04

sudo apt-get install virtualenvwrapper  
gedit .bashrc

Add the following line to the end of .bashrc.

source /usr/share/virtualenvwrapper/virtualenvwrapper.sh

Save the changes to .bashrc and close gedit. Source your .bashrc for the changes to take effect.

cd 
source .bashrc

Create a Python virtual environment for python3. You can only install python3 packages inside this Python virtual environment. If you also want to install Python 2.x packages, then you need to make another Python virtual environment.

mkvirtualenv py3 -p /usr/bin/python3

The new Python virtual environment for python3 will be created in the ~/.virtualenvs/py3 directory. .virtualenvs is a hidden folder.

Install a package.

cd ~/.virtualenvs/py3
source bin/activate
python2 -m pip install package-name

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – pyvenv vs venv vs python-virtualenv vs virtualenv and python 3

Install Python 3.x packages in a Python virtual environment in 16.04 and later

Install Python 3.x packages in a Python virtual environment in Ubuntu 14.04

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