I was able to build retroarch and all cores in Debian Jessie and it appears to work fine except for two things:
Any ideas? Did I miss something? I tried manually changing the audio device to alsa in the config but that did not work.
EDIT: fixed ths zip issue by installing zlib1g-dev, but the lack of sound remains 
EDIT 2: Solved 
apt-get install libasound2-dev
Why you didnāt use the debian packaging? A simple debuild -b or dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc -b and you make a debian package, and when you install it the dependences are solved automatically.
I followed the wiki for Linux building:
https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/w ā¦ ide-(Linux
Maybe your alternate method could be added to it. However, debuild did not work for me. So, I followed the wiki which did to a degree, although joystick input is not working properly.
I created a new thread because the other one was about building in Wheezy, not Jessie. I didnāt want to confuse anyone. Sorry about that.
You seem to know what you are doing in Linux more than I do. Any possibility that you can build debs of Retroarch and all cores for Debian Jessie? I am sure many folks would be grateful. I know I would.
EDIT: Interesting. I have tried both the debuild -b and dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc -b methods you suggested. In both cases I get a bunch of unmet dependencies. I thought this was supposed to build an installable deb file that resolved dependencies for you? I also tried debuild -b -d (flag to override) and it does not get very far. It always ends with a debuild: fatal error at line 1364.
So, no, a simple debuild -b does not cut it. Again, any assistance is appreciated.
Any answer as to why the recommended debuild -b option simply does not work? It was supposed to be āeasyā to quote the word. I was asked why I did not try something, and when I did and that advise failedā¦no alternate solution was provided. I love Retroarch and am appreciative of the work that went in to it, but the āhelp your neighborā factor is not here. This is probably why it is not available on so many Linux variants.
In any case, even with all necessary dependencies, it will not build deb files. Good news for Debian users that want to use Retroarch however, I have successfully build the executable and all cores fully functioning, and have discovered the necessary dependencies needed to do so in Debian (Jessie at least) . I will post a step by step detailed guide in a new thread on how to do this shortly, as I know I have found various threads around the internet with Debian users that would like to try Retroarch and help to get it working is sparse at best as we can see.
The dependencies are listed in the debian/control file, though theyāre for ubuntu, so I can imagine you might have needed slightly different packages for vanilla debian.
The RetroArch team is very small, and most of the discussion happens in IRC (#retroarch on Freenode), so any community assistance/documentation you can contribute is appreciated.
Yes, the dependencies were quite different. I am more than happy to help. I have posted a tutorial to build in Jessieā¦which is mostly from the wiki but contains the correct dependency names for Jessie. Works GREAT in Debian Jessie by the way.
Hope Iām not resurrecting a dead thread too much here for my first post (hi everyone BTW!), but the biggest issue I have run into thus far is that building stuff as packages pretty much isnāt there in a lot of cases. I pull down the mupen64plus-libretro tree for example and thereās no debian directory anywhere in the tree. There is a libretro-mupen64plus package in the PPA, but it has no corresponding source package.
Perhaps I am only expected to be able to build the stable version this way, but as what I am working on is the beginnings of a Libretro Box, ā¦ yeah.
You could argue that I should just use Ubuntu in that case, since most of what Iām doing should be focused on building a minimal Linux distribution and the tools to make it function more appliancey since my goal is NOT to be fiddling with libretro/retroarch/core innards too much at this time, and originally I did. Ran square into a problem with Ubuntu and Sony controllers. Bluez 4 vs 5. Debian uses 5, so I thought itād work out well enough.
You can find debian packaging for mupen here: https://code.launchpad.net/~libretro/libretro/mupen64plus-libretro-debian
For other cores, here.
If you can install bzr, you can do it to download:
cd mupen_folder/
bzr branch lp:~libretro/libretro/mupen64plus-libretro-debian debian
(Thought I replied to this?)
Thanks Sergio! I am somewhat rethinking whether building Debian packages actually makes much sense for my own purposes though, since I am really more trying to build a Retro Box installation than anything. I might do better with a kernel, busybox, and adding a few bits from a dist like Debian. I suppose using woof to build a sort of puplet is a possibility, and thereās an appeal to being able to run the thing from a read-only filesystem when itās doneā¦
My Linux-fu was strong a decade ago, but those were fairly early 2.6 days. Back then udev was emerging, upstart was a possible future, and you easily figured out what real block devices were mounted by typing mount. 
Iām catching up to systemd, how it replaces udev/hal, and other such things slowly but steadily. And Iām not sure RGUI is in a state where the stuff I need to make this work could be easily stuffed in. Lakka sure isnāt ready!
I need to play a bit more and come back (to a new thread) when I have something a little more ā¦ little more. Probably going to start building with jessieās debian-installer as a starting point.