When we compile software from source code on Linux system, header file missing is an issue which will happen frequently. Just like this error message:

Usually, you may copy the keyword from error message and search on Google, try to find some missing packages we need to install. But we have a better an unified solution, apt-file is for fixing this kind of issue.

Let’s install apt-file firstly with these command:

sudo apt-get install apt-file 
sudo apt-file update 

Then search the header file with it:

coderscat@MININT-ODP168:~/code/espanso$ apt-file search xdo.h
libxdo-dev: /usr/include/xdo.h
libxdo-dev: /usr/share/doc/libxdo-dev/html/structxdo.html 

Ok, we get the package name we are missing, install it with apt-get and problem will be solved.

sudo apt-get install libxdo-dev

Another useful command to list files installed by a DEB package:

dpkg --listfiles libxdo-dev