Error: You must put some 'deb-src' URIs in your sources.list

[hhopkins]

Ubuntu Version:
Ubuntu 25.04

Problem Description:

I’m having an issue with my webcam that I think I’ve narrowed down to a Pipewire. I’m trying to be a good citizen and test a recent development build before submitting an issue. I tried to follow these instructions under “Running development version of Pipewire”. It asks me to run sudo apt build-dep pipewire, but this returns the error Error: You must put some 'deb-src' URIs in your sources.list.

My sources.list is:

# Ubuntu sources have moved to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources

My ubuntu.sources is

Types: deb
URIs: http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
Suites: plucky plucky-updates plucky-backports
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg

Types: deb
URIs: http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
Suites: plucky-security
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg

Solution:

I found this thread. It suggests adding deb-src to the types line. i.e. Types: deb deb-src and then run sudo apt upgrade. I’m going to leave this thread up in case anyone else gets this issue (possibly caused by the sources file not getting written properly during a version upgrade?).

[graymech]

An alternative way to correct that error message is to open Software and Updates and tick the Source code box and do the same for the repositories in the Other Software tab.

Source Code repositories are only necessary if we want to download the source code for some reason. I do not think that the Source Code repositories are enabled by default. They are certainly not enabled on my 24.04.3 LTS which was a clean install and not an upgrade.

Regards

[hhopkins]

It cost me an extra ~200 MBs of storage after I added deb-src. I guess that’s why it’s not enabled by default. I have no clue why Pipewire’s build-dep needed this.

[rubi1200]

@hhopkins Welcome to Ubuntu Discourse

I edited your title because we do not mark topics as being resolved in the title.

Your options are to either mark the reply of a volunteer user as the solution (when relevant) or to edit your original post and add a line saying how the issue was resolved.

Alternatively, you could also edit your most recent reply to mention this.

Thanks for sharing with the community.