[Bug 38816] Re: Lacks make, cvs and modern automake deps

[mathrick]

But this is an end-user oriented package, and what you're referring to now is how things look like on debian(-derivative) build servers. There's clearly a domain mismatch here. 

I have nothing against not depending on build-essential (a casual developer doesn't need dpkg-dev, on the other hand, there's no explicit automake dep present), another package just for that could be created, but "let's assume it's present, but not state that in any way" is not helpful at all. In its current state, installing gnome-core-devel won't let you compile a single gnome application. That's clearly a packaging bug.
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Lacks make, cvs and modern automake deps
https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/38816