Use the following commands to obtain all dependencies for a full build from source. Note that there are no known version dependencies on any of these packages. If your (debian-based) distribution is lacking any of these package use apt-cache search <name> to find an alternative, where <name> is e.g., libunwind (i.e., remove version and details). Some remarks:

• It is possible to use iodbc instead of unixodbc for ODBC connectivity.
• The SWI-Prolog Java interface (JPL) works with many Java development kits, not only openjdk-8-jdk.
• The package libarchive-dev is needed as of 6.1.4 for libarchive, which is needed by pack_install/1.
• The package libossp-uuid-dev is needed as of 6.3.4 for library(uuid), which is needed for ClioPatria's SPARQL engine.
• The package libdb-dev is needed as of 7.3.8 for library(bdb), the BerkeleyDB embedded database interface.
• The package libreadline-dev and libedit-dev both provide command line editing for interactive usage. None is strictly needed and one of them suffices. libedit-dev is supported as of 7.3.34 and is intended to become the preferred command line editor.
• libunwind only simplifies debugging in case of a system crash.
• For a cmake based build (supported since 7.7.20), install cmake (version 3.5 or later) and preferably ninja from the package ninja-build. autoconf and curl are not required. See CMAKE.md

sudo apt-get install \
        build-essential autoconf curl chrpath pkg-config \
        ncurses-dev libreadline-dev libedit-dev \
        libunwind-dev \
        libgmp-dev \
        libssl-dev \
        unixodbc-dev \
        zlib1g-dev libarchive-dev \
        libossp-uuid-dev \
        libxext-dev libice-dev libjpeg-dev libxinerama-dev libxft-dev \
        libxpm-dev libxt-dev \
        libdb-dev \
        libpcre3-dev \
        libyaml-dev \
        openjdk-8-jdk junit

Note that older Debian based distributions, including the Debian stable (Squeeze (6.0)) ship with libunwind7-dev instead of libunwind-dev.

Raspbian does not have libunwind. Just leave it out. All other packages are available. SWI-Prolog versions 7.3.x require gcc 4.8 or later, provided by Raspbian GNU/Linux 8.0 (jessie). Total build time on a Raspberry pi model 2, including all packages is 22 minutes. If you want to reduce resources, the following packages are optional:

openjdk-8-jdk junit

Without you do not have Java connectivity (JPL)

libxext-dev libice-dev libjpeg-dev libxinerama-dev libxft-dev libxpm-dev libxt-dev

If you leave these out, add xpce to DISABLE_PKGS in build. Means you have no graphics, no graphical development tools and no regular expression support.

unixodbc-dev

Without, you have no ODBC database connectivity (e.g., MySQL)

libssl-dev

Without, you have no SSL (and HTTPS) support.

libgmp-dev

Without, you lack unbounded integer support, rational numbers, good random number generators, etc.

libpcre3-dev

Without, you have no regular expression support (library(pcre)).

libyaml-dev

Without you have no YAML support (library(yaml)). YAML support has been added to SWI-Prolog 7.7.11.

Note that including GMP support makes the memory footprint bigger, but mostly if you have no other applications depending on GMP. All the other optional components are only loaded if you actually use them.

Prerequisites to build the documentation

In the cmake based distributions, the HTML documentation is build as part of the default build procedure instead of being downloaded by prepare. The dependencies below are still needed to create the PDF documentation.

The generated documentation is included the source archives and downloaded by the prepare script when installing from the git source. To rebuild the documentation, the following packages are needed. Check man/README for further instructions.

sudo apt-get install \
        texlive-latex-extra \
        texlive-font-utils \
        texlive-fonts-extra \
        texlive-fonts-extra-doc \
        texlive-fonts-recommended \
        texlive-fonts-recommended-doc

Now that after you have installed dependencies, return to Build SWI-Prolog from source to complete installation.