Package 'mercurial' has no installation candidate, how do I fix it?

Question

E: Package 'mercurial' has no installation candidate. How can i solve this problem?

sudo apt-get install mercurial

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done

Package mercurial is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, oris only available from another source

Solution 1

As andol suggests, this is likely a result of the Universe repository component being disabled. Searching the Ubuntu package database for mercurial reveals it's in Universe.

One way to enable the Universe repository is to press Ctrl+Alt+F2 and run software-properties-gtk. In the Ubuntu Software tab, under Downloadable from the Internet, make sure the checkbox for Community-maintained Open Source software (universe) is checked. For more information on enabling Universe, see:

• How do I enable the "Universe" repository?

Then, to install Mercurial, run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install mercurial

mercurial can also be installed from the Software Center.

Solution 2

I resolve this by enabling the “Universe” repository

sudo add-apt-repository universe

Solution 3

Run sudo apt-get update and try again.

Comments

[William Brendel]

If possible, please update the question with the content of your /etc/apt/sources.list file. A wild guess might be that you don't have the universe component active.

[Admin]

What is your version of ubuntu? Also, sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list (as the @andol say) then copy/paste that.

[Eliah Kagan]

@ZDroid gksu gedit (or gksudo gedit, or, on Kubuntu, kdesudo gedit) is preferable because it doesn't create configuration problems for the graphical application being run.