missing sanity check that might help

Hello,

I just encountered another problem, but this time I found a solution 
myself. I would like to share it here:

Since I have lot's of problems compiling T2 with my Mandriva host system 
I installed a fresh debian (etch, stable) on the other box.
Downloaded 7.0 unpacked, configed (installed some packeges to debian 
that where desired) and tried to "Download -required".
The mirror detection went fine but nothing was downloaded.

I then checked with the trunk to the same result.

So I decided to dive into the scripts (with not so profound knowledge on 
linux scripts as I would like to have - I hope to learn some on this by T2).
After I while of digging I found out that config/default/packages was 
not written (still size 0).
In scripts/Create-PkgList I found that gawk is required.

I believe it would be good to have a sanity check on gawk (for other 
dummies like me).

Another idea, borrowed from "linux from scratch": A list and a script 
testing all required tools on the host system on availability and 
version, like in: 
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/prologue/hostreqs.html

What Do you think on this? This might probably help to prevent some 
troubles and all sanity checks could be centered in one point.

Regards
Matthias

BTW.: ATM the other box is downloading packages. I'm looking forward in 
seeing whether I can compile T2 there...