[Hampshire] Debian Etch and Synaptic? Mark II

I just installed Etch (minimum/base) system with a goal of creating a
cut down version of the system. Checking du -s / on the system, which
isn't quit correct as it shows 0.5G in /proc, I still find I have a
couple of G's disk space in use, so I started with Synaptic to remove
some packages which allow me to claw back a couple hundred megs of disk.
So I thought, what the hell, I'll get rid of cpp the GNU C
preprocessor. Synaptic informs me that it's needs to remove several 10's
of other packages. Everything form alacarte, throught gaim and gnome,
more lib* than I care to think about, metecity, nautilus, rhythmbox and
sound-juicer, down through xorg and many many others.

Now I don't know much about building a distro, but I fail to understand
why nautilus/metecity/gnome/xorg needs to have a 'C' pre-processor
installed. Any offers?

Alternatively, can anyone point me at a "how-to/tutorial" on installing
a minimal Debian Etch? (Mark II) I'm trying to build a Debian system
that will fix into 512M flash card.

thx in advance