Error: /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lncurses

I was working with genometools with HMMER enabled. While compiling, I got the following error message:

$ make with-hmmer=yes threads=yes cairo=no
[check for HMMER3]
[build HMMER3]
[compile pdom.o]
[link libgenometools.a]
[link libgenometools.so]
[link skproto]
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lncurses
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [bin/skproto] Error 1

I checked that libncurses5 was already installed and updated. Anyway, I did
sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev

again, but the error message was still there. Then I found a post (#23) on https://groups.google.com/group/android-building/tree/browse_frm/month/2010-10/6579583604439ab9?rnum=21&_done=/group/android-building/browse_frm/month/2010-10?&pli=1 and followed the suggestion and did 

sudo apt-get install lib32ncurses5-dev 

Now the error message is gone.

Compile BLAT on x86_64 Ubuntu 10.04

http://defsci.blogspot.com/2011/02/compile-blat-on-x8664-ubuntu-1004.html

Compile BLAT on x86_64 Ubuntu 10.04

Recently I needed to compile BLAT for x86_64 on Ubuntu 10.04 server. The BLAT pre-compiled binaries for linux are 32-bit. Here is how you do it:

1. apt-get install build-essential
2. Download  BLAT source
3. remove the -Werror compiler flag to treat warnings as errors
4. mkdir -p ~/bin/x86_64
5. export MACHTYPE=x86_64
6. make

Step (3) above requires editing the /inc/common.mk file, line 17 goes from     


HG_WARN_ERR = -DJK_WARN -Wall -Werror

to 


HG_WARN_ERR = -DJK_WARN -Wall
Make places the executables into ~/bin/x86_64 directory. Either add this to $PATH or copy the files to /usr/local/bin