How to download, compile, and install GNU ncurses on Debian/Ubuntu Linux

Category:

Tutorials > Operating Systems > Linux > Tools

ncurses is a programming library providing an API, allowing the programmer to write text user interfaces in a terminal-independent manner.

Here are the simple steps to download, configure, compile, and install ncurses on a Linux machine. I have tested these instructions on Debian/Ubuntu and CentOS Linux distributions but they should work on all Linux machines where compilers and make utility are installed. Please take a look at configuring Ubuntu Linux after installation to configure your Debian/Ubuntu Linux box for the required tools.

You can find the list of available ncurses versions at ncurses page. Please make sure you check the downloaded file's integrity before unzipping it. '#' (w/o quotes) in front of the command below means you have to run the command as root user (or use sudo <command>).

I downloaded and installed version 5.7.

$ wget http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses/ncurses-5.7.tar.gz
$ tar xzf ncurses-5.7.tar.gz
$ cd ncurses-5.7
$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/ncurses
$ make
# make install
$ ls -la /opt/ncurses

Thats it. Now you can use the ncurses to download, compile, and install MySQL cli.

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