
You can build apt from arch, but this needs the following additional
packages (in addtion to the usual build-depends):
autoconf automake xmlto perlsgml sgml2x sgmlspl docbook

then run:

$ debian/rules arch-build

that will build packages in the "debian/arch-build" directory. It will
honor "DEB_BUILD_PROG_OPTS" as options that are passed to debuild (e.g. -S 
may be usefull).
