These instructions are more complicated than they need to be but I'm trying to cover every contingency I can think of. This was tested on Ubuntu Hardy, Intrepid, and Jaunty (EDIT: Micropolis is included in Karmic repos), but should also work basically the same for other distros. Note, other distors might use a different package manager than apt. Note that obtaining the other required softwares for other distros may involve additional steps. If freebsd5-buildutils and the freebsd version of yacc packages are not in your repositories, then chances are build-essential and byacc has the required replacements. But this may not be the case. You only need yacc or byacc, not both. Note that this example uses Don Hopkin's 'official' version of Micropolis and may not include some of the tweaks and enhancements that unaffiliated developers have added. If you want one of those, get their source and follow their instructions.
This process will create a directory called micropolis-activity in your home directory but install the application system wide. You can use another directory if you wish (change "cd ~" to "cd /here/instead/"). The leftover micropolis-activity directory will contain a .deb file that is specific to your computer and existing software, you may want to keep it (it is of little use for redistribution, unless installing to many 'software identical' systems such as in a school computer lab'). Otherwise the leftover micropolis-activity directory can be trashed after the game is confirmed to run. If checkinstall is not available to you then use "sudo make install" and there will be no .deb created and uninstalling must be done manually. These commands are meant to be typed into a terminal (command-line).
So it begins:
sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxpm-dev x11proto-xext-dev libxext-dev wget tar build-essential checkinstall freebsd5-buildutils byacc yacc
cd /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/freebsd/yacc
cd ~
wget http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micropolis/micropolis-activity-source.tgz
tar -zxf micropolis-activity-source.tgz
cd micropolis-activity/src
make clean
make
sudo checkinstall
checkinstall will ask you several questions before it makes a .deb file based on your answers. If you don't answer them correctly, checkinstall will kick a small dog. If checkinstall doesn't work, or you start feeling guilty over repeatedly kicking a dog, then use this instead:
sudo make install
It should be ready to play
./Micropolis
If something went wrong with make:
Pay no attention to warnings, but if you got any of the following or similar error messages:
btyaccpa.ske:111: error: expected specifier-qualifier-list before ‘yyparsestate’
btyaccpa.ske:257: erreur: ‘yypath’ undeclared (first use in this function)
tclxgdat.y:67.15: syntax error, unexpected =
tclxgdat.y:86.32-33: valeur $ invalide : $3
Then you have used the wrong yacc or byacc, install the other one and try again. If it still doesn't work you may have to remove bison, and/or btyacc, at least for the moment, then try again (You can reinstall them after Micropolis works. Sloppy, but effective)
sudo apt-get remove bison
sudo apt-get remove btyacc
if something wen wrong with running Micropolis:
but if you get a Bad fd error then you will need to uninstall, replace sh with bash in the source code, then recompile, like this:
sudo apt-get remove Micropolis
sudo apt-get install rpl
cd micropolis-activity
rpl -R "/bin/sh" "/bin/bash" *
cd /src
make clean
make
checkinstall