Linux: Acquiring Source Code

Acquiring Source Code in Ubuntu

1. Update/enable the source package URLs. Note that in Ubuntu, these should already be in the sources.list file and just need to be uncommented. i.e. remove the "#" from the deb-src lines

   sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

   An example line might look like this:

   deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hirsute main restricted

2. Update the new package information that was added in step 1

   sudo apt-get update

3. Navigate to the directory that the source code will reside in, and download it.

   Example for downloading the source code for the grep utility

   sudo apt-get source grep

   Example for downloading the source code for bash

   sudo apt-get source bash

4. There should be a directory with the source code along with some other files. Move to the new directory to view the downloaded source code.

See Linux: Compiling and Installing Source Code for compiling and installing.

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