Installing libsdl2-dev on Kali 3.18.0 amd64

Question

I'm trying to wrap my head around how to install the libsdl2-dev package on Kali 3.18.0 amd64.

I can see that the package is available in the standard Kali repository here: http://http.kali.org/kali/pool/main/libs/libsdl2/, but I can't seem to get apt-get to install it along with its dependencies. Here is some of the output that I'm getting:

"sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev" yields:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package libsdl2-dev

"sudo apt-cache search libsdl2" yields nothing, while "sudo apt-cache search libsdl" yields a bunch of libsdl1.2 packages (I need libsdl2).

I'm using apt-get update before trying any installations. My sources.list file contains the following repositories:

deb http://security.kali.org/ kali/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.kali.org/ kali/updates main contrib non-free

deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali main contrib non-free
deb http://security.kali.org/kali-security kali/updates main contrib non-free

Other things I've tried:

• Adding the bleeding-edge repo "deb http://repo.kali.org/kali kali-bleeding-edge main contrib non-free"
• Downloading the package itself and using dpkg -i (doesn't work as there are lots of dependencies missing)

I'm thinking that my last resort would be to manually download all of the dependencies and use dpkg -i on all of them so that the apt-get install command doesn't complain. There has to be a more graceful way to do this though (and there's definitely some knowledge gap that I have with the package manager).

Is the package being ignored by apt because of incompatibilities with my distro version?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

My sources.list looks like this:

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 2016.1 _Kali-rolling_ - Official Snapshot amd64 LIVE/INSTALL Binary 20160120-18:14]/ kali-rolling contrib main non-free

#deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 2016.1 _Kali-rolling_ - Official Snapshot amd64 LIVE/INSTALL Binary 20160120-18:14]/ kali-rolling contrib main non-free

deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main non-free contrib
# deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main non-free contrib

I downloaded the DEB from the first link on the list you linked and then dpkg'ed it and it went flawlessly. You could try upgrading to Kali rolling release.