> I'm not entirely happy with the general approach of sprinkling very
> operating system (and even OS-version) specific tests around.
> This simply doesn't scale well and we may at some point end up with 
> 
> if exists(/usr/include/getopt.h) && empty(LOWER_OPSYS:Mirix5*) &&
> emtpy(OPSYS:MsomeOtherOS1) && (empty(OPSYS:MyetAnotherOne) &&
> !empty(OPSYS:MyetAnotherOne3))
> 
> etc. etc.
> 
> Is there no other, more general way to test for the specific capability
> required and provided?

I don't think so. Of course one could add a pkgsrc variable NEED_GNU_GETOPT
or something like this and set it globally on a per-system basis.

-- 
Georg Schwarz    http://home.pages.de/~schwarz/
 georg.schwarz@freenet.de  +49 178 8545053