Leafnode uses PCRE. I will always try to build with the latest installed version. There is a version of PCRE included in the source, so if you don't have a development package installed the build should still work, but Leafnode will not be statically linked against the system PCRE. PCRE must be version 2 (or possibly later), not version 1. The package uses debhelper. Note that while it conforms to FHS with old versions, it should also handle newer, more correct versions properly too.