Recommended Packages acting like Required

I don't want to dump a ton of data into this message, so I'll cover the highlights.
System is darn-near fully patched against lenny.


$ sudo apt-get -s upgrade | egrep '(ssh|spamassassin)' | grep Inst
Inst openssh-server [1:4.7p1-4] (1:4.7p1-5 Debian:testing) []
Inst openssh-client [1:4.7p1-4] (1:4.7p1-5 Debian:testing)
Inst spamassassin [3.2.3-1] (3.2.4-1 Debian:testing)
Inst ssh [1:4.7p1-4] (1:4.7p1-5 Debian:testing)

$ sudo apt-get install spamassassin
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
liberror-perl libmail-spf-perl libnetaddr-ip-perl libversion-perl
Suggested packages:
libmail-dkim-perl libnet-ident-perl pyzor
Recommended packages:
gcc libc6-dev libsys-syslog-perl re2c
The following NEW packages will be installed
liberror-perl libmail-spf-perl libnetaddr-ip-perl libversion-perl
The following packages will be upgraded:
spamassassin
1 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 8 not upgraded.
Need to get 1379kB of archives.
After this operation, 1200kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.

If you look at http://packages.debian.org/lenny/spamassassin, libmail-spf-perl is a recommended, not a required.

If I try to upgrade openssh-client openssh-server and ssh:
The following extra packages will be installed:
cpp cpp-4.2 gcc-4.2-base libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxdmcp6 libxext6 libxmuu1 x11-common xauth

cpp isn't even listed in the web page.

Has something changed that I'm not aware of, or are these bad packages that I should chalk up to "hey, that's what you get for not running stable"?

Thanks for any insight.

_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live Hotmail is giving away Zunes.
http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/ZuneADay/?locale=en-US&ocid=TXT_TAGLM_Mobile_Zune_V3

Relevant Pages