Install add-apt-repository on Ubuntu 22.04|20.04|18.04|16.04

If you have a minimal installation of Ubuntu 22.04|20.04|18.04|16.04, chances are you may not have commandadd-apt-repository present in your system. If you get the error “add-apt-repository command not found” while trying to add PPA repository, you’ll need to install add-apt-repository

For those new to Debian package management, add-apt-repository is a command line tool used for adding Personal Package Archive (PPA ) in Debian family Linux distributions.

Install add-apt-repository on Ubuntu 22.04/20.04/18.04/16.04

If your system is missing add-apt-repository command, install the software-properties-common package by running the following command in your terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install software-properties-common dirmngr apt-transport-https lsb-release ca-certificates

You can now add PPA repository with the syntax:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:<PPA Name>

The example below add PHP PPA repository

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

If you get an error message “codeDecodeError: ‘ascii’ codec can’t decode byte 0xc5”, set Locale before running the add-apt-repositorycommand:

sudo LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Once the PPA repository is added, update the package list and install your new package from the repository.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install <package>

That’s all. Enjoy using add-apt-repository on your Ubuntu or Debian system.

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