List of Build-Essential packages as of 2017-09-17, Debian sid This file lists the non-essential packages that are build-essential. The list is not closed under the "depends on" relation, so one will usually need to install more packages than given here. This list attempts to document the set of build-essential packages as well as possible. However, it is not authoritative (actually, there is no authoritative list at all); the definition of the "build-essential" class of packages given in Debian Policy Manual (version >= 3.6.1.1), section 4 "Source packages" (more precisely subsection 4.2 "Package relationships") is the definitive answer. Here's the definition (as of Policy 3.6.1.1): It is not necessary to explicitly specify build-time relationships on a minimal set of packages that are always needed to compile, link and put in a Debian package a standard "Hello World!" program written in C or C++. The required packages are called _build-essential_, and an informational list can be found in `/usr/share/doc/build-essential/list' (which is contained in the `build-essential' package). The list is given below in a format which is readable by both humans and programs. The format is described at the end of this file. BEGIN LIST OF PACKAGES libc6-dev [!alpha !ia64 !hurd-i386] | libc0.3-dev [hurd-i386] | libc6.1-dev [alpha ia64] | libc-dev Provides the ISO C standard library Indirectly depended on by g++, but we'll ignore it since libc6-dev is used for non-C++ programs too. libc6-dev-sparc64 [sparc] Used only on the sparc architecture. gcc (>= 4:10.2) g++ (>= 4:10.2) NOTE: The libstdc++ -dev library is not needed, as g++ depends on it make Also depended on by dpkg-dev, but make does warrant its own dependency since debian/rules will need it even if dpkg-dev stopped depending on it dpkg-dev (>= 1.17.11) Provides dpkg-genchanges and other scripts. Versioned, because of support for the build-time dependency fields in /debian/control and dpkg-architecture support for OS and CPU information. NOTE: Although this list does not contain them, all `Essential: yes' packages are build-essential as well. A list of such packages can be found by executing the following command `grep-status -FEssential -sPackage -ni yes' when the `grep-dctrl' package is installed and in its default configuration. Such list is installed with this package as the file `/usr/share/doc/build-essential/essential-packages-list' hurd-dev [hurd-i386] Provides libpthread.so (and other such essential components). END LIST OF PACKAGES Here's the format definition: - First line is the following, without any leading or trailing whitespace: BEGIN LIST OF PACKAGES - Last line is the following, without any leading or trailing whitespace: END LIST OF PACKAGES - A line with leading whitespace is a comment. - Other lines are joined with end-of-line replaced by comma, and the result is parsed like the body of the Build-Depends field. The list of build-essential packages for a particular architecture is constructed from the result list by ignoring all the package name - package version pairs which would be ignored if we were building for that architecture and then removing the architecture specifications. The Python program list2depends parses stdin as if it were this file and outputs one line that is suitable for use in a dependency field body of a Debian binary package. Local Variables: mode: text End: