Re: Build-Depends vs Depends

[Ben Finney <bignose@debian.org>]

Taylor Kline <taylor.kline@utexas.edu> writes:

> What is the difference [between the “Build-Depends” field and the
> “Depends” field]?

The difference is precisely that between building the package from
source, versus using the package installed.

The “Build-Depends” and “Build-Depends-Indep” fields appear only in the
source package stanza.

The “Depends” field appears only in a binary package stanza.

See Debian Polcy §5.2 for a summary, and §5 generally for a description
of what these fields mean.

> How are they treated differently during the apt installation process?

The installation process (the ‘dpkg’ tool does the actual installation
of an individual package) cares only about “Depends”, the declaration of
what other packages must be installed for this one to work.

The package build servers care about “Build-Depends” and
“Build-Depends-Indep”, because the job they're doing is not to use the
package but to build it from source.

-- 
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Ben Finney