apt-get source not checking build-depends?

[Harry Henry Gebel <hgebel@home.com>]

I used the command

fakeroot apt-get -b source debian-policy

to build the debian-policy package. The build began, but failed near the
end as a result of my not having the pstoedit package installed. pstoedit
is listed in debian-policy's build-depends, so shouldn't apt-get have
refused to attempt to build the package? debian-policy only takes a minute
to build so it was not a great inconvenience to install pstoedit and
rebuild the package; but some packages take a half hour or more to build,
and having the build fail at the end because apt-get attempted to build a
package that hadn't met it's build-depends is a major pain. I can't find a
command to make apt-get check dependencies before building, am I missing
something or should I get into the habit of running `su` and then `apt-get
build-dep` before building packages.

-- 
Harry Henry Gebel
West Dover Hundred, Delaware