The path to VMware Tools is null

As most of my readers know, I've written technical documentation throughout my career in high tech. I take some pride in my work, knowing that it's hard to get things right in an aggressive release schedule.
Because of my background, I always check the product documentation quite thoroughly before moving on to Google and then to support channels. I estimate that in 75-80% of the cases the documentation doesn't have what I need. The result is that a) after a few minutes with Google shows that the answer is elsewhere or b) after a few hours, that what I need to do hasn't been solved yet.
Fine. I can live with all that.
In the case of VMware, however, the prerequisites for a key component aren't mentioned in the product documentation. I learn this on my way to installing a broken component.
Here's what happens:
I install a new Linux guest system. In today's case, I'm installing a vanilla version of Debian. The guest installation is uneventful.
When it comes time to install VMware Tools, I follow the on-screen prompts, load the image, and run the script. I answer a bunch of prompts by pressing Enter. The script chugs for a while and then says:

Before you can compile modules, you need to have the following installed...

make
gcc
kernel headers of the running kernel

Searching for GCC...
The path "" is not valid path to the gcc binary.
Would you like to change it? [yes]

Urp.
I don't have GCC installed because I didn't know that I needed it.
I check the user manual.

The Guest Operating System Manual mentions that gcc and other tools should be installed prior to installing VMware Tools on SUSE, but nothing in the other Linux distributions.
It might have been nice for the script to check for the presence of GCC prior making me answer all of those prompts. 
My only option at this point is to ^C out of the installation script, install the build environment, rerun the installation script, and watch the script try to figure out what's happening.

File /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib32/libconf/etc/pango/pangox.aliases is backed up
to /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib32/libconf/etc/pango/pangox.aliases.old.0.

[snipped four messages]

This program previously created the file
/usr/lib/vmware-tools/libconf/etc/pango/pangox.aliases, and was about to remove
it. Somebody else apparently did it already.

One document is more than 500 pages; the other is 94. That's a lot of pages that don't include an essential prerequisite.
I've learned two lessons, although I'm not sure which one will prevail:

1. Install the build environment on any Linux VMware installation prior to installing VMware Tools.
2. Don't use VMware.

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Added bonus:
Here's what the Firefox spell-checker suggests as replacement for the unfamiliar word VMware: