The Debian packages are available to enable automatic installation using aptitude or apt-get.
First, become root or use sudo on each command.
Add Patrick Chevalley's signature to APT:
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys D79BF92A
Edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list
to add the following line:
deb http://www.ap-i.net/apt stable main
If you want more frequent update with the development version add the following line:
deb http://www.ap-i.net/apt unstable main
Then refresh your package list, from a command line type:
aptitude update
To install the software with all the prerequisite and the additional data files:
aptitude -r install skychart
To install only the minimal software without the prerequisite:
aptitude -R install skychart
The prerequisite software are normally automatically installed. If not, check you have the packages libgtk2.0-0, libglib2.0-0, libpango1.0-0, libjpeg62, libpng12-0, libsqlite3-0, xplanet, indi, ffmpeg
That's all, exit the root shell and type skychart to run the program.
The update for a new version is done at the same time as the standard update for the other software of your distribution. Normally once a week on Monday for the unstable release.