[Easy Fix] add-apt-repository command not found

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By rasho

This quick tutorial shows you how to quickly fix the “add-apt-repository command not found” error on Debian, Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions.

Ubuntu & Debian Latest Version

The latest version of Ubuntu 19.10, 18.04, 16.04 and Debian 10/9/8, add-apt-repository command utility is available under the software-properties-common package. So use the following command to install it.

# sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

The command output will be something like this:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  software-properties-common
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 9,912 B of archives.
After this operation, 197 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 software-properties-common all 0.96.24.32.5 [9,912 B]
Fetched 9,912 B in 2s (5,685 B/s)
Selecting previously unselected package software-properties-common.
(Reading database ... 265950 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../software-properties-common_0.96.24.32.5_all.deb ...
Unpacking software-properties-common (0.96.24.32.5) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.3-2) ...
Processing triggers for dbus (1.12.2-1ubuntu1) ...
Setting up software-properties-common (0.96.24.32.5) ...

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Once you have installed software-properties-common, you should update the system using this command:

# sudo apt-get update

You can now comfortably use add-apt-repository or apt-add-repository commands to add PPA.
I hope this quick tip helped you in fixing “add-apt-repository: command not found” error on Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions.
That’s it. Enjoy.
See also:How to add apt repository on Ubuntu/Debian Linux

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