No, it's 'essential'. Just like the "Priority: Essential" packages, nothing needs to depend on it. A person wishing to compile things is responsible for making sure build-essential is installed, just like the installer maker sure all 'essential' packages are installed.
-- Lacks make, cvs and modern automake deps https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/38816 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
