What are "build-essential" & "build-dep"?

reno_rita

I am researching how to install Ruby 1.9.1 in Xubuntu 10.04 and I came across the command build-essential and build-dep multiple times. Sometimes it is followed by packages and sometimes it is both preceded and post-ceded by packages. The 2 examples I am looking at are: sudo apt-get install build-essential zlib1g zlib1g-dev zlibc libruby1.9 libxml2 libxml2-dev libxslt-dev sudo apt-get build-dep ruby1.9 And: sudo apt-get install ruby irb ri rdoc...

Originally asked by classer on Stack Exchange (superuser) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

The command sudo apt-get build-dep packagename means "As root, install all dependencies for 'packagename' so that I can build it". So build-dep is an apt-get command just like install, remove, update, etc. build-essential is a package which contains references to numerous packages needed for building software in general.

Full answer by Kleist: https://superuser.stackexchange.com/a/151559 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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