Ubuntu

[James R. Van Zandt]

Peter Dobratz <peter at dobratz.us> writes:
...
>   For some time, I ended up compiling my own versions of
>   certain applications.  Usually the Debian package lists what packages
>   you need to build from source and you can just install those (packages
>   ending in "dev"), then you compile and install to /usr/local some
>   newer version of a package.  

FWIW you can usually type

  apt-get source foobar

to download (to the current directory) the sources for the foobar package, and

  apt-get build-dep foobar

to install all the packages needed to build it.

                 - Jim Van Zandt