Is there a tool to automatically fetch build dependencies under Debian or Ubuntu?

Question

I recently downloaded the source tarball for a GTK application that I'd like to improve. It uses the standard ./configure and make build sequence.

The first time through, configure reported a bunch of unmet build dependencies, such as libgnomeui-2.0. As I usually do, I had to manually go through and find the Debian *-dev package names corresponding to these dependencies... of course the names never match up quite the same, so it gets to be a real hassle.

So what occurred to me is... are there any helper tools to automatically install the build dependencies listed by the automake/autoconf configuration files???

(I already know about the dpkg-buildpackage tools, but in this case I am interested in building from a raw distribution-independent source tarball, not from the Debian package source.)

Answer 1

apt-get build-dep <package>

Answer 2

short of writing your own script that does an apt-cache search for each package -dev you may be out of luck.

Answer 3

You want auto-apt (manpage).