Taken from Ubuntu dependencies page:

Resolving dependencies on Debian-like systems (using apt-get)

One of the easiest ways to obtain all packages necessary to build a certain package is using the build-dep feature of apt-get: As root, run:

# apt-get build-dep package_name

However since there is no libffado in the repository yet, this won't work for FFADO. But applying it to libfreebob can already help a lot:

# apt-get build-dep libfreebob

This will install most of what is needed to build libffado.

acspike noted on Thu, 07/03/2008 - 22:32 that you need to add "build-essential" to the list of dependencies.

Debian Squeeze (testing)

Dependency	Runtime package	Build package
libxml++2	libxml++2.6c2a	libxml++2.6-dev
libraw1394	libraw1394-8	librwa1394-dev
libiec61883	libiec61883-0	libiec61883-dev
libavc1394	libavc1394-0	libavc1394-dev
dbus-1	libdbus-1-3	libdbus-1-dev
expat	libexpat1	libexpat1-dev
Qt	libqt3-mt	libqt3-mt-dev
PyQt?	python-qt3	pyqt-tools
PyQt?	python-qt4	pyqt4-tools-dev (for svn unstable trunk)
dbus-python	python-dbus
jackd	libjack0	libjack-dev
qjackctl	qjackctl
scons	scons