Tag Archives: make command failed with curses.h file not found

How to resolve the fatal error: curses.h: No such file or directory

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Learn how to get rid of the fatal error: curses.h: No such file or directory during utility or third-party package installations in Linux.

Solution for curses.h: No such file or directory

Many times during package/utility installations you must have come across an error like one below :

fatal error: curses.h: No such file or directory

Recently I faced it while installing cmatrix from source code. I saw an error like one below :

# make
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.     -g -O2 -Wall -Wno-comment -c cmatrix.c
cmatrix.c:37:20: fatal error: curses.h: No such file or directory
 #include <curses.h>
                    ^
compilation terminated.
make: *** [cmatrix.o] Error 1

After troubleshooting I came up with a solution and able to pass through make stage. I am sharing it here which might be useful for you.

curses.h header file belongs to ncurses module! You need to install packages ncurses-devel, ncurses (YUM) or libncurses5-dev (APT) and you will be through this error.

Use yum install ncurses-devel ncurses for YUM based systems (like Red Hat, CentOS, etc.) or apt-get install libncurses5-dev for APT based systems (like Debian, Ubuntu, etc.) Verify once that package is installed and proceed with your next course of action.

Follow category ‘Troubleshooting errors‘ for more such error based solutions.