deps

Build dependencies

Reference for packagers. Every entry below was verified against the source tree at master = 4f881d07b; nothing here is inferred from upstream mc or from distribution conventions.

The tree splits cleanly in two: libraries linked into the mc binary itself, and libraries pulled in by individual panel plugins, each of which is a separate .so. Only the first group is unavoidable for a minimal install.

Core: linked into /usr/bin/mc

Library	Status	Linked via	Debian/Ubuntu build package
glib-2.0 >= 2.32	required, AC_MSG_ERROR	everywhere	libglib2.0-dev
gmodule >= 2.32	required	same	same package
slang >= 2.0	required with the default --with-screen, AC_MSG_ERROR	MCLIBS -> lib/libmc.la	libslang2-dev
libmagic	optional, --enable-mctree-magic (auto)	src/mctree (noinst) -> binary	libmagic-dev
libssh2 >= 1.2.8	optional, --enable-shell-ssh2 (auto)	src/vfs/shell (noinst) -> binary	libssh2-1-dev
ext2fs + e2p >= 1.42.4	optional, --enable-ext2fs-attr (auto)	MCLIBS; only e2p is linked, ext2fs supplies headers	libext2fs-dev
gpm	optional, --with-gpm-mouse (auto, Linux only)	MCLIBS	libgpm-dev
X11	optional, AC_PATH_XTRA	not linked - loaded through gmodule at runtime	libx11-dev (headers only)

Where each check lives: m4.include/mc-glib.m4:81, m4.include/mc-with-screen-slang.m4:8, configure.ac:219, m4.include/vfs/mc-vfs-shell.m4:13, m4.include/mc-ext2fs-attr.m4:25-34, configure.ac:407, m4.include/mc-with-x.m4:18.

Needing no package of their own: libutil (openpty, in glibc), libintl (AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external]), in glibc), termcap (tgoto, comes with S-Lang). The check >= 0.9.10 framework (m4.include/mc-tests.m4:23) is used by make check only and never appears at runtime.

Editor plugins (ctags, etags, spell) have no Makefile.am of their own - they are compiled into the binary through builtin-plugins.c and add no libraries. Aspell is off by default (--enable-aspell, default no) and is loaded through gmodule even when enabled, so it never becomes a link-time dependency.

Plugins: one shared object each

There are exactly 13 installable modules, all under src/panel-plugins/. Nothing is installed into vfs_plugins_dir or editor_plugins_dir yet; those paths are declared but unused.

Plugin	Libraries beyond glib	Switch
arcmc	libarchive >= 3.0, libmagic	--enable-panel-plugin-arcmc (auto)
ftp	libcurl >= 7.20.0	--enable-panel-plugin-ftp (auto)
s3	libcurl >= 7.75.0	--enable-panel-plugin-s3 (auto)
mongo	libmongoc-1.0 >= 1.21, libbson-1.0 >= 1.21	--enable-panel-plugin-mongo (auto)
samba	smbclient	--enable-panel-plugin-samba (auto)
sftp	libssh2 >= 1.2.8	--enable-vfs-sftp (auto)
docker, git, hello, k8s, panelize, shell-link, systemd	none	none, always built

Build packages: libarchive-dev, libcurl4-openssl-dev, libmongoc-dev plus libbson-dev, libsmbclient-dev.

The pkg-config files these checks look for were confirmed present in Ubuntu noble: libmagic.pc in libmagic-dev, smbclient.pc in libsmbclient-dev, libmongoc-1.0.pc in libmongoc-dev, e2p.pc in libext2fs-dev, and slcurses.h in libslang2-dev.

Dependencies no scanner will find

Five plugins link nothing but shell out to external programs. dpkg-shlibdeps cannot see these; list them by hand in Recommends or Suggests.

Plugin	Program
docker	docker
k8s	kubectl
git	git
systemd	systemctl
shell-link	sh

Determinism

Every optional library can now be pinned from the command line, so a package's feature set is decided by the packaging and not by whatever happens to be installed in the build chroot. Pass each switch explicitly in debian/rules rather than relying on auto:

--enable-mctree-magic=yes --enable-shell-ssh2=yes --enable-ext2fs-attr=yes
--enable-panel-plugin-samba=yes --enable-panel-plugin-ftp=yes
--enable-panel-plugin-arcmc=yes --enable-panel-plugin-s3=yes
--enable-panel-plugin-mongo=no --enable-vfs-sftp=yes
--with-gpm-mouse --with-screen=slang

Each switch takes auto, yes or no. With yes a missing library is a hard configure error, which is what a packaging build wants - a silently dropped feature is far worse than a failed build.

Note that --enable-shell-ssh2=no removes libssh2 from the core binary but not from the tree: the sftp panel plugin has its own copy, so libssh2 leaves the core package and lands in the plugin subpackage instead.

The seven unconditional plugins are a different matter - they are perfectly deterministic, just not configurable. hello is a demonstration module and probably does not belong in a distribution package at all.

Debian build-dependency list

debhelper-compat (= 13), pkgconf, gettext,
libglib2.0-dev, libslang2-dev,
libmagic-dev, libssh2-1-dev, libext2fs-dev, libgpm-dev, libx11-dev,
libarchive-dev, libcurl4-openssl-dev, libsmbclient-dev,
libmongoc-dev, libbson-dev,
check

Runtime dependencies for both the core package and the plugin subpackages are computed by ${shlibs:Depends}, which inspects the ELF files of each binary package separately - do not write them out by hand. Two things do need to be written by hand: every plugin subpackage needs Depends: mc (= ${binary:Version}), because plugins resolve the core's symbols at dlopen time and a partial upgrade would fail with undefined symbols at runtime; and the external programs above belong in Recommends/Suggests.