Hi.
The version of zpaq included with debian, 1.10, is completely obsolete as the current version is 7.02. Moreover, it is buggy as the configs files don't work out of the box nor the optimization for speed.
So my first goal is to create a completely new package. The build-dep for zpaq are simple: g++, perl, and make. There is no run-time dependency.
Separating this package into zpaq, libzpaq, and libzpaq-dev would be a nice addition.
Stay tuned.