A common source of unnoticed depwaits or uninstallability are main packages which introduce new build or binary dependencies from universe. These either require fixing, or filing a main inclusion report.

To help with this, I added a new check-mir script into ubuntu-dev-tools version 0.110, which walks through all build and binary dependencies, checks if they are in main/restricted, also considers alternative dependencies, and create a report with a few hints.

For a main package where everything is alright, it looks like this:

$ check-mir 
Checking support status of build dependencies...

Checking support status of binary dependencies...
All dependencies are supported in main or restricted.

Example output for a totally synthetic situation with universe dependencies, non-preferred alternatives in main, and other special cases:

Checking support status of build dependencies...
 * pmount binary and source package is in universe
  ... alternative libexif-dev is already in main; consider preferring it
 * weechat binary and source package is in universe
 * sendmail-bin is in universe, but its source sendmail is already in main; file an ubuntu-archive bug for promoting the current preferred alternative

Checking support status of binary dependencies...
 * wesnot does not exist (pure virtual?)
 * wesnoth binary and source package is in universe

Please check https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MainInclusionProcess if this source package needs to get into in main/restricted, or reconsider if the package really needs above dependencies.