Losses at Mandriva

All compile time choices are a QA issue? Hmm that's an interesting stance to take. I wouldn't go that far. Making some dependencies optional at compile time can be a deliberate design choice.

Are you saying that all optional functionality across all applications and projects which relies on external libraries should be coded as runtime detectable features and that compile-time linkages to optional libraries should be forbidden on the grounds of QA?

-jef