Taylor Kline <[email protected]> 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. -- \ “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” —Pablo | `\ Picasso | _o__) | Ben Finney
