I just wrote a brief step-by-step for this (at least, this is what I
do, maybe there's a better way) as part of the install tutorial for
starmac-ros-pkg [1] but it occurs to me that this is generally
applicable. Can someone suggest where this should go on the wiki?

Cheers,
Pat

[1] http://www.ros.org/wiki/starmac_flyer/Tutorials/Installation#System_Dependencies