packages don't fully report dependencies

["Susan G. Kleinmann" <sgk@sgk.tiac.net>]

(I was going to report this to debian-bugs, but I figured the mailer
would go crazy when I filled in the first line with "Package: * (almost)"

I've been trying to install Debian 1.? onto an empty disk on my system.
As I just reported in a bug report about perl a few minutes ago, my status
is as follows:
a) installation of Mar 16 boot/root disks went fine.
b) compilation of "new" kernel (1.3.64) customized for my system went fine,
   after unpacking and configuring the necessary support files (gcc, libc5, 
   make, bin*),
c) the process of unpacking and then configuring various packages is not
   going well at all.

The fundamental problem was/is that perl won't install correctly (it complains
that it "Can't load libdb.so.1").  I just sent a bug report in about that. 

What surprises me is that many packages (over a dozen now, I quit counting) 
don't install if perl isn't properly installed, and don't report on the
DEPENDS line of their control files that they do, in fact, depend on perl.
I'm also surprised that this problem hasn't been mentioned before.

So my questions are:
a) is it really Debian policy that packages can omit their dependence on 
   another package without reporting that on the DEPENDS line?
b) is it obvious that I've made some mistake, and if so what was it?
c) If the answer to (b) is no, then is it obvious what additional 
   configuration history might be needed to answer (b)?

TIA,
Susan Kleinmann
sgk@sgk.tiac.net