"dpkg-dev" is not installed by default on 16.04

[Wise Melon]

I have recently noticed that the package "dpkg-dev" is not installed by default on Ubuntu GNOME 16.04, in previous releases it has been installed by default, and still is installed by default on the main Ubuntu flavour and the other Ubuntu flavours I've had a look at so this seems to be a bug. dpkg-dev is a very useful package and should be install by default.

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/1571698

[Tim Lunn (darkxst)]

I am not sure why we would need this on default install, it is for Debian Packagers/Devs and not really useful to an end-user.

Installing ubuntu-dev-tools should pull this in, and is the recommended way to get setup for packaging/development work since it pulls in most of the required tools.

As a note I have thought about adding a developer set to our seeds that would pull in everything required to work on development of GNOME and some extra tools like jhbuild, git-buildpackage etc. There wouldnt be a DVD spun for this though, you would either install it via tasksel or the meta package ubuntu-gnome-dev or something. Although atleast some of the missing bits currently could likely go into ubuntu-dev-tools. (see bug 1571929)

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

Well, the unpacking part of 'apt-get source' doesn't work without it and I would expect such a standard command to work without having to manually install another package. This package is also installed on most other flavours and has previously been installed by default so I don't know why it would be dropped here, it is not very professional in my opinion to not install something that such a standard command relies on, and there really is no cost of having it, so the only real change not having it gives is that 'apt-get source' gives an error instead of working.

Do as you will, but I see no real point as it's always been here before, and it's in basically all the other flavours still, removing it just removes some basic functionality in association with a rather basic command one wouldn't think needs the installation of something separate for, I would expect all the dependencies for something so simple to be pre-installed.

[Tim Lunn (darkxst)]

I don't see any sign of it having been seeded on Ubuntu GNOME back as far as Trusty, and I doubt it is directly seeded anywhere.

apt-get source doesn't work by default anyway since the src archives are not enabled. Also you should generally use pull-lp-source to get source packages and avoid archive skew (this grabs the latest upload, rather than what has been published in -release). However that requires install ubuntu-dev-tools anyway., which is the first package anyone doing Ubuntu Development should install!

Just because its on the other images is not really justification, why is it on the other images, what is pulling it in? Is there a reason a normal user would need this package. You can trace the rdepends using the germinate output
http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-archive/germinate-output/ubuntu-gnome.xenial/rdepends/

and the seeds:
people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-archive/germinate-output/ubuntu-gnome.xenial/rdepends/
https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu-seeds/ubuntu.xenial

I am still of the opinion developer tools shouldnt be on the image, our images are already much bigger than I would like, and if we added every useful utility that everyone asks for then it going to get even bigger.