Public bug reported:
I was just trying to build nemiver from svn. I ran autogen.sh and then
it said "package libgtop-2.0 is missing". My first gut reaction was to
try "sudo apt-get install libgtop-2.0-dev" but that did not work.
Instead I had to use apt-cache to find out that the name is actually
libgtop2-dev.
Why is autogen.sh/configure printing the wrong package name? I know it
must have been discussed many times before, but really is this the best
user experience that free software can do? Maybe there is some reason
why it's hard, but surely we can steam ahead and improve it, no?
Getting the autotools user experiene to be great is pretty important
because so many projects use autotools and so for many/most new aspiring
free software developers this is their first real encounter. If using
autotools was easier and more intuitive more people would argubly get
through that initial first-in-a-lifetime compile and maybe they would
even write their first patch. After you've done that your spirit is much
higher and it feels more meaningful. But if you get stuck for a long
time not being able to compile stuff, that's sort of a turn off.
I believe walking through the actual first time developer experience and
ironing out kinks like this could lead to more developers for ubuntu in
particular and for free software in general.
** Affects: ubuntu
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
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autogen.sh/configure prints the wrong name for dependency packages
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/270038
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