o.k., so this is weird.... I agree that meld does not list gnome-user-guide as a dependency. gome-user-guide gets auto-installed because meld seems to required yelp - even though it is not listed in its dependencies either:
root@uw1:~# aptitude install meld The following NEW packages will be installed: gnome-user-guide{a} meld yelp{a} yelp-xsl{a} 0 packages upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B/13.4 MB of archives. After unpacking 55.1 MB will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] After I install meld, I can safely remove yelp, yepl-xsl and gnome-user-guide again and meld keeps working as expected, so why does yelp get installed in the first place? This problem is reproducible on all three of my Debian machines, including a fresh install. Installation of meld pulls in yelp. FWIW, I don't seem to have any pending or broken packages installed that could be blamed for the yelp installation: root@uw1:~# apt-get install -f Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. and root@flexo:~# aptitude search ~b root@flexo:~# Any idea why meld pulls in yelp? Thanks!