How can I install a developers environment to build packages?
If you want to build packages in your Debian system you will need to have a basic development environment, including a C/C++ compiler and some other essential packages. In order to install this environment you just need to install the build-essential. This package is a meta-package or place-holder package which depends on the standard development tools one needs to build a Debian package. Some software can, however, need additional software to be rebuilt, including library headers or additional tools such as autoconf or gettext. Debian provides many of the tools needed to build other software as Debian packages. Finding which software is precisely required can be tricky, however, unless you are planning on rebuilding Debian packages. This last task is rather easy to do, as official packages have to include a list of the additional software (besides the packages in build-essential) needed to build the pacakge, this is known as Build-Dependencies.
