How to Install build-essential on Ubuntu 16.04/18.04 Linux
This post will guide you how to install build-essential package on your Ubuntu 16.04/18.04 Linux server. How do I install GCC or G++ compiler via installing build-essential package on your Ubuntu Linux.
What is build-essential?
The build-essentials package is a reference for all the packages needed to compile a Debian package. It generally includes the GCC/g++ compilers and libraries and some other utilities. So if you need to install C/C++ compiler, you just need to install build-essential package on your machine. And the build-essential is a metapackage that installs many other packages, like G++, GCC, dpkg-dev, make,etc.
Install build-essential Package
The build-essential package is already available on the default Ubuntu repository. so you just need to install it with the apt install command. Before installing build-essential package, you need to update the Ubuntu repo index with the following command:
$ sudo apt update
Then type the following commmand to install build-essential package:
$ sudo apt install build-essential
Outputs:
devops@devops-osetc:~$ sudo apt install build-essential Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: libllvm6.0 x11proto-dri2-dev x11proto-gl-dev Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them. The following NEW packages will be installed: build-essential 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 4,758 B of archives. After this operation, 20.5 kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 build-essential amd64 12.4ubuntu1 [4,758 B] Fetched 4,758 B in 1s (3,325 B/s) Selecting previously unselected package build-essential. (Reading database ... 231616 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../build-essential_12.4ubuntu1_amd64.deb ... Unpacking build-essential (12.4ubuntu1) ... Setting up build-essential (12.4ubuntu1) ...
Check GCC Version
After the installation process is completed, you can confirm your installation by checking for GCC version with the following command:
$ gcc --version
Outputs:
devops@devops-osetc:~$ gcc --version gcc (Ubuntu 7.3.0-27ubuntu1~18.04) 7.3.0 Copyright (C) 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Let’s write a simple C program as below:
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf("Hell, World!\n ");
}
Save this program as test.c file in your Ubuntu system, and try to execute the following command to compile and execute it:
$ gcc -o test test.c $ ./test
Outputs:
devops@devops-osetc:~$ gcc -o test test.c devops@devops-osetc:~$ ./test Hell, World!
Conclusion
You should know that how to install build-essential on your Ubuntu 14.04 or 16.04 or 18.04 Linux from this guide. And if you want to learn more about the build-essential, you can go the below official web site to checking the getting started guide directly.
