Package: debhelper Version: 9.20160403 Severity: wishlist dh_gconf still adds gconf2 to ${misc:Depends}, but AFAICT that's a legacy holdout and is no longer needed anymore. The gconf2 package uses triggers to update its database with new schemas; if you install gconf2, it will rebuild the database from scratch anyway. So for something like pidgin, which adds URL handlers to gconf (not used by GNOME 3 anyway) but doesn't need gconf for normal operation, that's just an extraneous dependency that just seems to irritate certain users.
-- System Information: Debian Release: stretch/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (600, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 4.4.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) Versions of packages debhelper depends on: ii autotools-dev 20160430.1 ii binutils 2.26-8 ii dh-autoreconf 12 ii dh-strip-nondeterminism 0.016-1 ii dpkg 1.18.4 ii dpkg-dev 1.18.4 ii file 1:5.25-2 ii libdpkg-perl 1.18.4 ii man-db 2.7.5-1 ii perl 5.22.2-1 ii po-debconf 1.0.19 debhelper recommends no packages. Versions of packages debhelper suggests: ii dh-make 2.201605 -- no debconf information