How to tell yum to install headers?

[GregLee]

Is there an easy way to get yum, or whatever installer I use, to install header files and whatever other files I would need to compile against any libraries I install? The last time I installed Fedora, I must have made a mistake about this, because getting the files I needed for development, or simply compiling software by hand, caused me a lot of trouble. I would often have to go looking for header files, because they hadn't been installed by default, and it was such a pain that eventually I just stopped using rpm or yum at all.

I'm about to do a new install of Fedora 16, and I'm hoping to find a better way, this time around.

[PabloTwo]

The only tool I use for finding and installing software, including the *-devel packages which contain the header files for specific libraries, is yum. For compiling code, you can start off getting the basics with:

yum group install "Development Libraries" "Development Tools"

There are several other speciality "Development" groups.. i.e "Legacy Software Development" and "X Software Development". Just use the "yum group list" command to see them all.

Expecting Fedora to install every single *-devel rpm package in it's repositories by default so they would "just be there" for your immediate use is wrong headed thinking. Here is the number of *-devel packages I currently have installed on my system:

BASH:~/-> yum list installed | grep devel | wc -l
96

And here is the number of additional *-devel packages if I asked yum to give them all to me:

BASH:~/-> yum list available | grep "\-devel" | wc -l
5271

I don't even want to think about how much disk space would be required to accommodate all that, much less the fact that probably 98% of those would never ever ever be needed/used by me. It's generally fairly easy to use yum to determine what *-devel package you need to install for a given "missing" header.

Aside from the usual looking into the README and INSTALLING files that generally come with most source code tarball packages and checking for any advice on what libraries are needed at the projects website, say, for instance, you run a ./configure and it halts on some error about not finding "zzlp/lib.h". What to install to get the missing "lib.h"? Use yum to find out:

BASH:~/-> yum provides *zzip/lib.h
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto
updates/filelists_db                                                                                                 | 7.7 MB     00:24     
zziplib-devel-0.13.59-2.fc15.i686 : Development files for the zziplib library
Repo        : fedora
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/include/zzip/lib.h



zziplib-devel-0.13.59-2.fc15.x86_64 : Development files for the zziplib library
Repo        : fedora
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/include/zzip/lib.h



zziplib-devel-0.13.59-2.fc15.x86_64 : Development files for the zziplib library
Repo        : @fedora
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/include/zzip/lib.h

Easy enough: yum install zziplib-devel
Yes, you still have to "go looking for header files" when compiling code in Fedora, but it's not that hard or daunting a task.

[GregLee]

Originally Posted by PabloTwo

Yes, you still have to "go looking for header files" when compiling code in Fedora, but it's not that hard or daunting a task.

Thanks for the information. I guess that is a "no" answer to my question.

[JEO]

If you are compiling starting from a source rpm, there is a command in the yum-utils package called yum-builddep which goes and installs everything you need to compile the source rpm package.

[PabloTwo]

Originally Posted by GregLee

Thanks for the information. I guess that is a "no" answer to my question.

Yes, I suppose that is a no to your question.

[GregLee]

Originally Posted by PabloTwo

I don't even want to think about how much disk space would be required to accommodate all that, ...

Oh, and I don't see why disk space would be a problem. I can't count the devel packages on my system now (because I stopped keeping up the yum and rpm databases), but I just counted the number of files in my /usr/include, and that is over 23,000 -- just a normal accumulation of a few years of use. And my new computer will have 6 times the disk space.

I think it's sad if yum doesn't have a switch saying "give me the devel files too, and also for any dependencies, dependencies of dependencies, and so on." Getting us out of dependency hell is what it's supposed to be for.

---------- Post added at 09:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:16 AM ----------

Originally Posted by JEO

yum-builddep

That will be useful.