Install on Ubuntu from .deb files
This article applies to Ubuntu only.
See also: Multiplatform Programming Guide
Please See Installing Lazarus on Linux - a page that covers most of what you need for most Linux Distributions.
This page is substantially out of date and may be removed.
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In General
Why install from .debs?
The easiest way to install Lazarus on Ubuntu is via the software Centre or Synaptic. However if that is unsuccessful or the version of Lazarus in the repository is too old and you want a newer version then you can 'install from debs'.
.deb files
.deb files are the ideal files for installing on Ubuntu. You need to download the Lazarus .deb files you want. They will usually be on SourceForge. There will be a Lazarus .deb and a Free Pascal .deb. They will match each other.
In Particular: Lazarus 0.9.30 on Ubuntu 10.04
Get The files
https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/
Repository
The versions in the Ubuntu repository are
- Lazarus 0.9.28
- Free Pascal 2.4.0
These are too old.
SourceForge
The versions on SourceForge are
- Lazarus 0.9.30
- Free Pascal 2.4.2
These are what I want.
Find SourceForge .deb files
The names of the .deb files I need to download are
- lazarus-0.9.30-i386.deb.tar (71.1MB)
- fpc-2.4.2-0.i386.deb.tar (38.5 MB)
You can search for these directly in a Search engine with something like
Lazarus 0.9.30 .deb SourceForge
Download and Extract
Download these two files. Double click on them and accept the offer to extract.
- Extract Free Pascal into folder 'a'
- Extract Lazarus in folder 'b'.
- Move the folders onto the Desktop
Inside the folders
Once done, there are 21 .deb files in folder a and 12 .deb files in folder b. Two common mistakes when installing Lazarus are
- not installing Free Pascal first
- not installing Free Pascal source code.
However, notice that Free Pascal source code is one of the files in folder a. Therefore, this will NOT need to be downloaded and installed separately.
Install Free Pascal
This should be done first.
Open a terminal.
cd Desktop
cd a
dpkg -i *.deb
This last command will install Free Pascal and Free Pascal source code.
Errors
Ideally, everything would run smoothly and the installation would complete without error. However when I did it, there were a number of errors. These errors are sometimes 'show-stoppers' so they should be sorted out if possible. The most common error is a missing dependency, as happened to me.
Missing Dependencies
This means that a package that Lazarus expects to be installed on your system already is not there. The missing packages were:
- libgtk2-dev
- libogg-dev
- libvorbis-dev
- libmodplug-dev
- a52cat
- + a few others. If you look through the output in the terminal you will see which packages failed to install and why it was.
Install missing dependencies
Open Synaptic. Search for each of the missing packages and install them.
a52cat
This package is not in the Ubuntu 10.04 repository. We have to leave it and hope for the best.
Reinstall Free Pascal
Repeat the previous installation procedure with: Open a terminal.
cd Desktop
cd a
dpkg -i *.deb
Free Pascal will now install fairly smoothly.
fp-units-multimedia
Only the multimedia unit will not install. This is due to the missing a52cat package. However it may not be critical.
Check the installation
You can check the Free Pascal installation in three ways:
- Run it
Open a terminal
fpc
it should open in the terminal.
- Look in Synaptic and check that fpc and fpc-src have been installed.
- Find the files
You can see where the files are stored with
sudo dpkg -L fpc
Install Lazarus
This is similar to Free Pascal
Open a terminal.
cd Desktop
cd b
dpkg -i *.deb
and the installation will proceed.
Errors
An error occurs installing package lcl-qt4-0.9.30.
lcl-qt4-0.9.30
From the terminal output you can see that the unit can not be installed due to a dependency on ... However, if you read the information that appears in Synaptic for this package then it says
"Actually this is an empty package but ..."
I think we can safely ignore it.
Test
Open Lazarus and try to create a simple 'Hello World' application with a button click. It worked with mine and the installation is complete.
Check with Synaptic
You can check that Lazarus has been installed with Synaptic
Fix Broken packages
Unfortunately, I now have 2 broken packages on my Ubuntu system, fp-multimedia and lcl-qt4. I choose 'Edit/Fix broken Packages and the fp-multimedia unit goes green but the lcl-qt4 package goes bright red - not normally a good sign. However if you select
Apply
then Ubuntu will fix the multimedia package and remove the qt4 package. Everything is then in order.
Final test
Create a Hello World application with a button and a label. If this works then things are looking good. Lazarus is installed.
