>> Packages like perl-base and ncurses-base are definitely not
>> needed to build a Hello World type package.
> Yes they are, as without them the system is broken.
The system is also broken if awk isn't installed. libc6.postinst and
dpkg.postinst use it, for example.
I think, the only reason why awk isn't marked essential is that it
would make it impossible to switch between mawk and gawk. I also
think, that base-files depends on awk because of this.
awk should therefore be added to the file "/usr/share/doc/
build-essential/essential-packages-list".
At least, I'm not going to add it to my "Build-Depends".
