Why can I not install ncurses development package?

Question

I am trying to configure Asterisk 12.3.2 on Debian 6.0.9 but I am getting an error:

"configure: error: *** termcap support no found (on modern systems, this typically means the ncurses development package is missing)".

When I try to install it by:

apt-get install libncurses5-dev

I get the message that package cannot be found.

Solution 1

libncurses-dev is what you want.

Additionally, you may be interested to know that you can install all the current prerequisites with contrib/scripts/install_prereq. You pass it the install argument like: contrib/scripts/install_prereq install to install all dependent packages on your system.

Solution 2

Acording to this blog post titled: How to install Asterisk 1.8.4 on Debian 6.0.1 I think you want to install ncurses-dev and not libncurses5-dev. They're building an older version of Asterisk but thought this might be of help in your situation.

Also you can see all the ncurse packages like so:

$ apt-cache search ncurses | grep dev

Comments

[arnefm]

What terminal emulator are you using? Have you tried looking through the available ncurses packages with apt-cache search ncurses?

[arheops]

If you have issues with compilation, it is highly recommended NOT build asterisk but use rpm(pre-builded) version.

[Alen Milakovic]

Asterisk is available for Debian, including a wheezy packport. Is there some reason you are trying to build it from source?