Debian Linux

Superuser

By default, in Debian no user can use sudo if a password for the root user was provided during the installation.

So, in order to install the project dependencies, we've got two options. The first option is opening a root shell. Run:

su

You'll be asked to introduce the password for the root user.

The second option is adding a regular user to the sudo group. For that, after opening a root shell, run:

gpasswd -a <your_username> sudo

You'll have to log out and log in again for these changes to take effect.

System update

Run a general system update:

sudo apt update

Git

Git is officially maintained in Debian:

sudo apt install git

Ruby version manager

Ruby versions packaged in official repositories are not suitable to work with Consul Democracy, so we'll have to install it manually.

First, we need to install Ruby's development dependencies:

sudo apt install libssl-dev autoconf bison build-essential libyaml-dev libreadline-dev zlib1g-dev libncurses-dev libffi-dev libgdbm-dev

The next step is installing a Ruby version manager, like rbenv:

wget -qO- https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv-installer/raw/main/bin/rbenv-installer | bash
source ~/.bashrc

CMake and pkg-config

In order to compile some of the project dependencies, we need CMake and pkg-config:

sudo apt install cmake pkg-config

Node.js version manager

To compile the assets, you'll need a JavaScript runtime. Node.js is the preferred option. To install Node.js, we will install a Node.js version manager, like NVM:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.0/install.sh | bash
source ~/.bashrc

PostgreSQL

Install postgresql and its development dependencies with:

sudo apt install postgresql libpq-dev

You also need to configure a user for your database. As an example, we'll choose the username "consul":

sudo -u postgres createuser consul --createdb --superuser --pwprompt

Imagemagick

Install Imagemagick:

sudo apt install imagemagick

Chrome or Chromium

In order to run the system tests, we need to install Chrome or Chromium.

sudo apt install chromium

Now you're ready to go get Consul Democracy installed!