Determine Missing Files

Question

I am very new to Linux.

My question is this : I have installed CodeBlocks IDE from the AppCenter, and tried to compile a simple "Hello World" program to no avail.

After researching and looking at the output errors in CodeBlocks I found that it was a compiler RELATED issue. From that point, and looking here and there, I found here in Stack Exchange the solution was pretty simple : All I had to do was to type into terminal :

sudo apt-get install build-essential

My question is this : How can someone determine what is missing and thus type the correct thing/title after sudo apt-get install [correct title?]

It is very frustrating to install something from the AppCenter and not having it in working order. It is like getting a download from Play Store for android and finding out that it has missing files and having no real way to determime what to add/download ....

Answer 1

It's not an AppCenter issue, CodeBlocks didn't works like Visual Studio which provides everything you need to build programs (linker, compiler...) out of the box.

CodeBlocks provides just an editor and an interface but you still have to make it work for your languages of choices installing the right packages from apt and if needed CodeBlocks plug-ins.

Personally I would advise you to ditch CodeBlocks in favour of Visual Studio Code (which is different from Visual Studio which works only on Windows and MacOS) which still needs to be prepared with the right packages and plug-ins to work properly for your language but at least is better supported and is easer to find tutorials (try to google "write [your language] in Visual Studio Code") and plug-ins.