Install Pandoc (required for docverter)

Question

For the life of me I can't figure out how to install pandoc. I tried the approach recommended on its Github repo as well as all 3 approaches recommended on the pandoc site. I'm installing on Ubuntu 12.04 so I first did sudo apt-get install haskell-platform.

Here's where the error occurred at each step:

1) Installing as recommended on the Github repo:

# cabal install --enable-tests
Registering zlib-conduit-1.0.0...
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
http-conduit-1.9.4.5 depends on mime-types-0.1.0.3 which failed to install.
mime-types-0.1.0.3 failed during the building phase. The exception was:
ExitFailure 9
pandoc-1.12 depends on mime-types-0.1.0.3 which failed to install.

2) Primary installation method on Pandoc site:

# cabal install pandoc
[35 of 45] Compiling Text.Pandoc.Parsing ( src/Text/Pandoc/Parsing.hs, dist/build/Text/Pandoc/Parsing.o )
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
pandoc-1.11.1 failed during the building phase. The exception was:
ExitFailure 9

3) "If my distribution has GHC 6.12"

# cabal install cabal-install
[46 of 67] Compiling Distribution.Simple.LocalBuildInfo ( Distribution/Simple/LocalBuildInfo.hs, dist/build/Distribution/Simple/LocalBuildInfo.o )
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
Cabal-1.16.0.3 failed during the building phase. The exception was:
ExitFailure 9
cabal-install-1.16.0.2 depends on Cabal-1.16.0.3 which failed to install.

4) Installing the tarball:

# cabal install pandoc
[23 of 45] Compiling Text.Pandoc.Writers.Texinfo ( src/Text/Pandoc/Writers/Texinfo.hs, dist/build/Text/Pandoc/Writers/Texinfo.o )
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
pandoc-1.11.1 failed during the building phase. The exception was:
ExitFailure 9

why not install directly from the repos? `sudo apt-get install pandoc` — amc, Sep 04 '13 at 14:46
great,thanks that worked! feel free to convert to an answer and I'll accept it. — tim peterson, Sep 04 '13 at 15:09

amc · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-04T16:12:30.083

26

You can install directly from the repos:

sudo apt-get install pandoc

edited Sep 04 '13 at 16:12

answered Sep 04 '13 at 15:33

amc

7,022
7
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10

I get `pandoc 1.9.1.1` by this way. Isn't there a newest version available ? – Stéphane Laurent Feb 06 '14 at 18:34
totally no...I get `E: Unable to locate package pandoc` – Alexander Mills Apr 16 '20 at 21:14
Which version of Ubuntu are you using? It’s available at least in trusty and xenial onwards. – amc Apr 16 '20 at 21:48
1

Solution is outdated. Current version of pandoc on apt is 2.9. Recent version is 2.17. Significant changes with these two versions. I didn't want to manually install the deb package and used the package manager homebrew instead. https://brew.sh/ – Matthias Pitscher Jan 26 '22 at 23:09
the solution is not outdated - it works. the `pandoc` version you are getting may not be the latest, as is typical with many distros, especially with LTS versions. – amc Jan 27 '22 at 03:04

score 20 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 31 '17 at 06:11

20

I found that installing cabal took up a lot of disk space in my VM, so I prefer to use the deb that the pandoc developers provide. Here's what I do to download and install the current deb (for pandoc v15.1.1):

sudo wget https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/download/1.15.1/pandoc-1.15.1-1-amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i pandoc-1.15.1-1-amd64.deb

You can check the latest release numbers here: https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/

edited Mar 31 '17 at 06:11

Sridhar Sarnobat

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answered Oct 20 '15 at 11:04

Ben

303
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2

This is was by far the easier solution to getting the newest version of Pandoc installed on my DigitalOcean vps. The apt-get version was 1.12 (I believe) and downloading the latest package with this method installed v1.17, which includes the wonderful feature of converting from docx, which i what I was after. Thanks @Ben! – TheBrockEllis Mar 30 '16 at 17:32
This was by far the easiest way for me, too, for 1.19.1 (from 1.17.1). I love pandoc but I do find it terribly hard to install, and this worked like a charm. – Chris Beeley Jan 18 '17 at 14:27
Yep, apt-get for Ubuntu 14 in 2017 was useless so this was a lifesaver (no exaggeration given how awesome pandoc is). – Sridhar Sarnobat Mar 31 '17 at 07:00
I downloaded the [latest `*.deb` release](https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/) (in my case, 2.1.1) from Github and installed it in 18.04 (pre-release) with the GDebi Package Manager. Worked a treat. Makes life *much* easier!! – Dɑvïd Jan 25 '18 at 11:34

score 12 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

As pointed out by Stephane Laurent, the version of pandoc in the repos is far from the newest and doesn't allow nice features such as handling citations with --biblio. I struggled to install the newest version using the instructions on the pandoc website and github but here's how I finally did it for Ubuntu 13.10.

Install cabal
```
sudo apt-get install cabal-install
```
Update cabal package database
```
cabal update
```
Make sure that path to cabal is at start of PATH (tip from here)
```
PATH=$HOME/.cabal/bin:$PATH
```
Use cabal to install alex and happy
```
cabal install alex happy
```
Use cabal to install pandoc (and pandoc-citeproc if wanted)
```
cabal install pandoc pandoc-citeproc
```
Check pandoc version to confirm installed
```
pandoc --version
```

You'll need to add the PATH=$HOME/.cabal/bin:$PATH command to your ~/.profile so it's available on your next restart. Happy converting!

score 2 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:39

2

I had similar issues trying to install pandoc on a 512 MB machine in the clouds. According to a comment for this question I was getting the ExitFailure 9 because GHC was receiving a SIGKILL because I was using too much memory. To me this explained the lack of any useful messages with verbose switched on. I turned off ghc optimizations by installing with cabal-dev install pandoc --ghc-options="-O0" and pandoc compiled fine with a far smaller memory footprint. This is not a smart idea if you are in a production environment though!

edited May 23 '17 at 12:39

Community

1

answered Oct 06 '13 at 07:10

sh54

121
4

do you get a version more recent than 1.9.1.1 by this way ? – Stéphane Laurent Feb 06 '14 at 18:54

Install Pandoc (required for docverter)

4 Answers4