equivalent development/build tools for suse professional 11

Solution 1:

You can find this on the Suse forum.

http://forums.opensuse.org/applications/413553-build-essential.html

There is no 'build essential' type package - You can install c/c++ dev tools with the command zypper install -t pattern devel_C_C++ or by installing either the C/C++ Compiler and Tools (on suse 11.0) or C/C++ Development pattern from YAST Software management

Solution 2:

In addition to Jeroen's answer, i ran this command to find out the pattern name:

$ zypper se -t pattern devel
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S | Name        | Summary                  | Type
--+-------------+--------------------------+--------
i | Basis-Devel | C/C++ Compiler and Tools | pattern

Then it was a matter of installing the packages:

$ zypper install --type pattern Basis-Devel
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...

The following NEW packages are going to be installed:
  adaptec-firmware aspell aspell-en aspell-ispell atmel-firmware autoconf automake bison brocade-firmware ctags cvs emacs emacs-info emacs-x11 flex gcc43-c++ gcc43-info gcc43-locale gcc-c++ gcc-info gcc-locale gdbm-devel giflib
  glibc-info icom-firmware ipw-firmware kernel-default-devel kernel-source libaio-devel libasound2 libncurses6 libstdc++43-devel libstdc++-devel mpt-firmware ncurses-devel pkg-config rcs tack texinfo xaw3d

The following NEW patterns are going to be installed:
  Basis-Devel Minimal

<snip>

This was on SLES SP1.