How To Install libtermbox-dev on Debian 12

Learn how to install libtermbox-dev on Debian 12 with this tutorial. libtermbox-dev is Library for writing text-based user interfaces (dev)

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install libtermbox-dev on Debian 12.

What is libtermbox-dev

libtermbox-dev is:

Termbox is a library that provides minimalistic API which allows the programmer to write text-based user interfaces.

It is based on a very simple abstraction. The main idea is viewing terminals as a table of fixed-size cells and input being a stream of structured messages. Would be fair to say that the model is inspired by windows console API. The abstraction itself is not perfect and it may create problems in certain areas. The most sensitive ones are copy & pasting and wide characters (mostly Chinese, Japanese, Korean (CJK) characters). When it comes to copy & pasting, the notion of cells is not really compatible with the idea of text. And CJK runes often require more than one cell to display them nicely. Despite the mentioned flaws, using such a simple model brings benefits in a form of simplicity. And KISS principle is important.

At this point one should realize, that CLI (command-line interfaces) aren’t really a thing termbox is aimed at. But rather pseudo-graphical user interfaces.

This package ships with headers and static library.

There are three methods to install libtermbox-dev on Debian 12. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install libtermbox-dev Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install libtermbox-dev using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install libtermbox-dev

Install libtermbox-dev Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install libtermbox-dev using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install libtermbox-dev

Install libtermbox-dev Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install libtermbox-dev using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install libtermbox-dev

How To Uninstall libtermbox-dev on Debian 12

To uninstall only the libtermbox-dev package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove libtermbox-dev

Uninstall libtermbox-dev And Its Dependencies

To uninstall libtermbox-dev and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 12, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove libtermbox-dev

Remove libtermbox-dev Configurations and Data

To remove libtermbox-dev configuration and data from Debian 12 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge libtermbox-dev

Remove libtermbox-dev configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove libtermbox-dev configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge libtermbox-dev

Dependencies

libtermbox-dev have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install libtermbox-dev package on Debian 12 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.