It looks like the description of the dependencies needed to build the library was not very good, and it leaded to people wasting lots of time figuring out how to build. I created a file README-dev with a cohomprensive list and mentioned it in the hacker's guide, section "Information for Newcomers". I hope it is much clearer now.
-- Jose E. Marchesi jema...@gnu.org GNU Project http://www.gnu.org
