> Even worse: it fails at the first missing dependency instead of listing them. Yes, this is a fair criticism. Fortunately, many projects state their dependen

> Even worse: it fails at the first missing dependency instead of listing them. Yes, this is a fair criticism. Fortunately, many projects state their dependencies. But not all do. If I'm already on a Debian system that has another version of the package, `apt-get build-dep' is very helpful to get most of the way there. Of course this is completely outside Autoconf. Whether it fails immediately or not depends on how the author writes `configure.ac'. Usually `AC_MSG_ERROR' is used right away, because it's convenient. Instead, some authors choose to set a flag and fail at the end.