OK, so I built a complete set of stages (with no circular dependencies!)
on amd64 for testing, using both the "default-linux/amd64/dev/2008.0"
and the "default-linux/amd64/dev/2008.0/desktop" profiles with the
following changes and everything worked perfectly.  I would like to
replicate this to the tree before the snapshot today.  If nobody has any
objections in the next 12 hours or so, I'm going to do it.

base/packages:
removed debianutils
removed perl
removed python
changed sys-apps/portage to virtual/portage

default-linux/packages.build:
removed perl
removed python
changed sys-apps/baselayout to virtual/baselayout
changed sys-apps/portage to virtual/portage

Even without perl/python in packages.build, we still end up with both in
stage1's tarball.  We pull in perl via auto{conf,make} and python via
portage (duh).  I'd like to also try removing autoconf and automake from
packages and packages.build above, since things *should* now be
depending on them if they need them.  Of course, I won't commit that
until after posting here again after testing it and being sure it's
good.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Games Developer