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🏷️ NAME

build-rdeps - find packages that depend on a specific package to build (reverse build depends)

🚀 Quick Reference

Use Case	Command	Description
Find reverse build dependencies	build-rdeps package	Search all packages that build-depend on the specified package.
Update package lists before search	build-rdeps -u package	Run apt-get update before searching.
Use sudo with update	build-rdeps -s -u package	Use sudo when running apt-get update.
Search in a specific distribution	build-rdeps --distribution=dist package	Select another distribution to search.
Ignore non‑free components	build-rdeps --only-main package	Only consider the main component.
Print maintainer field	build-rdeps -m package	Print the maintainer for each package found.

📋 SYNOPSIS

build-rdeps package

📖 DESCRIPTION

build-rdeps searches for all packages that build-depend on the specified package.

The default behaviour is to just grep for the given dependency in the Build-Depends field of apt's Sources files.

If the package dose-extra >= 4.0 is installed, then a more complete reverse build dependency computation is carried out. In particular, with that package installed, build-rdeps will find transitive reverse dependencies, respect architecture and build profile restrictions, take Provides relationships, Conflicts, Pre-Depends, Build-Depends-Arch and versioned dependencies into account and correctly resolve multiarch relationships for crossbuild reverse dependency resolution. (This tends to be a slow process due to the complexity of the package interdependencies.)

⚙️ OPTIONS

• -u, --update 🔄 Run apt-get update before searching for build-depends.
• -s, --sudo 🔐 Use sudo when running apt-get update. Has no effect if -u is omitted.
• --distribution 🌐 Select another distribution, which is searched for build-depends.
• --only-main 🚫 Ignore contrib and non-free
• --exclude-component 🚫 Ignore the given component (e.g. main, contrib, non-free).
• --origin 🏷️ Restrict the search to only the specified origin (such as "Debian").
• -m, --print-maintainer 👤 Print the value of the maintainer field for each package.
• --host-arch 🏗️ Explicitly set the host architecture. The default is the value of dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_ARCH. This option only works if dose-extra >= 4.0 is installed.
• --build-arch 🏗️ Explicitly set the build architecture. The default is the value of dpkg-architecture -qDEB_BUILD_ARCH. This option only works if dose-extra >= 4.0 is installed.
• --no-arch-all, --no-arch-any 🚫 Ignore Build-Depends-Indep or Build-Depends-Arch while looking for reverse dependencies.
• --old ⏪ Force the old simple behaviour without dose-ceve support even if dose-extra >= 4.0 is installed. (This tends to be faster.)
  Notice that the old behaviour only finds direct dependencies, ignores virtual dependencies, does not find transitive dependencies and does not take version relationships, architecture restrictions, build profiles or multiarch relationships into account.
• --quiet 🔇 Don't print meta information (header, counter). Making it easier to use in scripts.
• -d, --debug 🐛 Run the debug mode
• --help ❓ Show the usage information.
• --version ℹ️ Show the version information.

📦 REQUIREMENTS

The tool requires apt Sources files to be around for the checked components. In the default case this means that in /var/lib/apt/lists files need to be around for main, contrib and non-free.

In practice this means one needs to add one deb-src line for each component, e.g.:

deb-src http://<mirror>/debian <dist> main contrib non-free

and run apt-get update afterwards or use the --update option of this tool.

📜 LICENSE

This code is copyright by Patrick Schoenfeld <schoenfeld AT debian.org>, all rights reserved. This program comes with ABSOLUTELEY NO WARRANTY. You are free to redistribute this code under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later.

👤 AUTHOR

Patrick Schoenfeld <schoenfeld AT debian.org>

Debian Utilities 2026-03-04 BUILD-RDEPS(1)

🏷️ NAME 🚀 Quick Reference 📋 SYNOPSIS 📖 DESCRIPTION ⚙️ OPTIONS 📦 REQUIREMENTS 📜 LICENSE 👤 AUTHOR