From：h ttp://joysofprogramming.com/install-readline-linux/

the apt-cache search and apt-get install commands are really useful.

Readline is used to read a line after editing. To work with readline in C/C++, you must install the readline packages.

Let’s see the different readline packages

apt-cache search readline

You can see a number of packages. To work with readline, the important requirements are
libreadline: For running applications using readline command
libreadline-dev: For developing applications using readline. Compilation purposes

Let’s install the packages

sudo apt-get install libreadline6 libreadline6-dev

Now you can compile a readline program