'dpkg-source' unpack error on Ubuntu GNOME 16.04

Question

After installing Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 with GNOME 3.20 in a VM I have found that if I run an apt-get source command such as:

apt-get source apt

I get the following errors after it has downloaded the files:

sh: 1: dpkg-source: not found
Unpack command 'dpkg-source -x apt_1.2.10ubuntu1.dsc' failed.
Check if the 'dpkg-dev' package is installed.
E: Sub-process dpjg-source returned an error code (1)

I did not get this error on previous versions of Ubuntu GNOME nor do I get this error on Ubuntu (Unity) 16.04 so what is the problem? Is this a bug?

Answer 1

Ubuntu GNOME no longer includes the dpkg-dev package by default as it is a developer/maintainer tool and is not likely to be needed by an end-user.

So those who do wish to be able to use such commands as you gave, will need to install it with:

sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev