How does one install a minimal gnome-shell?

I've just installed xubuntu and removed everything I don't need. Now I'd like to install gnome -shell but not any of the other gnome packages. Ideally, I'll have only xfce related programs with the addition gnome-shell (and everything needed to have a fully functional gnome-shell panel / system tray).

What is the proper way to accomplish this? I'd like to keep the number of installed packages to a minimum.

Solution 1:

I often use this parameter of apt for such things:

   --no-install-recommends
       Do not consider recommended packages as a dependency for installing.
       Configuration Item: APT::Install-Recommends.

Use it as follows:

sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install gnome-shell