Isn't Autoconf Supposed To Be, Well, Automatic?
Wherein I complain about things that annoy me.
While attempting to build Carrier:
$ ./configure [many tests run, taking several minutes] GtkSpell development headers not found. Use --disable-gtkspell if you do not need it. $ ./configure --disable-gtkspell [many tests run, taking several minutes] GStreamer development headers not found. Use --disable-gstreamer if you do not need GStreamer (sound) support.
And iterate that six times. Would it be so hard to just carry on and inform the user that some things won't be built because the headers were not found? Without an explicit --enable-blah request, these should not be hard errors (well, IMO).