How to circumvent full system update to install just 'build-essentials'?

Question

After I install a fresh copy of Ubuntu (version 12.04), I need to install build-essentials. To do so, in the terminal I have to run this first:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

before I'm able to install build-essentials.

These two commands take a lot of time and install many things.

Is there a way to install build-essentials without running these two commands, or a way that these two commands don't install all the updates and hence will take less time?

Answer 1

Your package manager has to be updated once so it knows the package lists (The catalogue of packages that are available). Only then can you install any new package in a new installation.

To avoid bandwidth consumption, please do sudo apt-get update at the least, so your computer knows where to get the packages from. Upgrade can be avoided, unless you get errors when you do the next step: sudo apt-get install build-essentials.

You might also want to install binutils-gold if you are compiling OpenGL or something similar.

Answer 2

Build Essentials packages is part of compiling tools: CompilingEasyHowTo

Thus, users strongly recommended to update and upgrade their distributions to minimize compiler/packager(installer) errors.

Hence the fact, even though you're do not planned to compile, you're need to be sure that your packagers and de-packagers is working right way.