Comment 7 for bug 136738

Can't you just write a bunch of python scripts that encompass some of the functionality from each of the libraries necessary, attempt to run them and if you get any kind of errors at all, bail during config?

I literally have no idea on this (I don't know python), but this is how the autotools traditionally tests for a bunch of library dependencies in other languages.

If that can't be done, it would at least be nice to say something along the lines of "If you don't have these packages installed a-w-n will not build. As we cannot test for this, you will need to do so for your distribution", and list common names for them.

2 cents.