How to install tmux from source?

Question

I've download tmux and am trying to install it on Ubuntu 10.04.

$ ./configure 
Configured for Linux
$ make
cc -DBUILD="\"1.3\"" -std=c99 -D_GNU_SOURCE -D_POSIX_SOURCE -iquote.   -c -o attributes.o attributes.c
In file included from attributes.c:23:
tmux.h:30:19: error: event.h: No such file or directory
In file included from attributes.c:23:
tmux.h:831: error: field ‘name_timer’ has incomplete type
tmux.h:1025: error: field ‘key_timer’ has incomplete type
tmux.h:1086: error: field ‘event’ has incomplete type
tmux.h:1102: error: field ‘repeat_timer’ has incomplete type
tmux.h:1122: error: field ‘identify_timer’ has incomplete type
tmux.h:1125: error: field ‘message_timer’ has incomplete type
make: *** [attributes.o] Error 1

Solution

The error tells you that you lack the header file event.h, it's probably part of libevent.

To be able to compile a program you will need to install all it's dependencies first (including headers, the -dev packages). In the tmux webpage they say that it depends on libevent and ncurses. So this command will likely install all that you need (not tested):

sudo apt-get install libevent-1.4 libevent-dev libncurses5-dev

But if you need to ask this you shouldn't probably be compiling things from source, unless you are doing it to learn, just for fun or just having a terrible day ;).

Comments

[Kees Cook]

Or, since it is in the archive already, you can just request to install the build-dependencies directly: sudo apt-get build-dep tmux