Ubuntu 20.04: Build and install coreutils from the source

09 Jun 2020

I wanted to build and install coreutils on a Ubuntu server. You will be probably fine with the stable release of coreutils that comes with Ubuntu. First I had to install the tools needed for the build.

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install build-essential \
                   autoconf \
                   automake \
                   autopoint \
                   bison \
                   gperf \
                   texi2html \
                   texinfo

You can check the current version by running the below command.

$ ls --version
ls (GNU coreutils) 8.30
Copyright (C) 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie.

Now we need to get the source code of the coreutils.

$ git clone https://www.github.com/coreutils/coreutils.git

Change the directory to the repository. Execute bootstrap and configure script.

$ cd coreutils
$ ./bootstrap
$ ./configure

Finally, build and install using the below command.

$ sudo make install

Now you can check if it updated the version. You might see a different version.

$ ls --version
ls (GNU coreutils) 8.32.22-189776
Copyright (C) 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie.

Ubuntu 20.04: Build and install coreutils from the source

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