I needed to install Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 for my dev work. I found that it does not install most of the dev tools/packages by default.
Start with build-essential. Presumably you're after C/C++ stuff. Don't forget:
To install the necessary dev files to build a given package, run the command:
sudo apt-get build-dep <package>
For example:
matt@stanley:~/cpfs$ sudo apt-get build-dep pidgin Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Note, selecting libltdl-dev instead of libltdl3-dev The following NEW packages will be installed: doxygen libenchant-dev libgadu-dev libgstfarsight0.10-dev libgtkspell-dev libidn11-dev libltdl-dev libmeanwhile-dev libncursesw5-dev libnm-util-dev libnspr4-dev libnss3-dev libperl-dev libsasl2-dev libsilc-dev libsqlite3-dev libstartup-notification0-dev libxss-dev libzephyr-dev network-manager-dev tcl tcl-dev tcl8.4-dev tk tk-dev tk8.4-dev x11proto-scrnsaver-dev 0 upgraded, 27 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded. Need to get 11.3MB of archives. After this operation, 60.3MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Generally, most packages have a development version. By convention the names of theseare the very same, but have an -dev sticked to the end. If you're interested, you can also get the source-code for any package from the repo (sudo apt-get source ...) and even let apt automatically build it. Check out the manpage of apt-get for specific details.
You can do
apt-cache search <package or tools>
You don't need to run this as root or sudoed. Through this manner you can find the correct package name.