NB: this has been sent to several mailing lists. Watch those replies! Dave Golden and I have been hacking on Devel::CheckLib, which should be on a CPAN mirror near you soon. It's similar to Devel::CheckOS, in that it will let module authors specify dependencies which aren't just other perl modules - if they need, eg, libjpeg, then they can use this module in Makefile.PL / Build.PL to make it a pre-req, and if it's missing then the CPAN testers will SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT IT and not annoy the author.
It's still in something of a state of flux so not ready for real-world use yet, but we're at the stage where we need lots of people to beat it to hell and back. Please try to run the tests on as many platforms as possible, with as many perls as possible, and in particular using perls built with as many compilers and linkers as possible. The more alert of you will have noticed that there is a bootstrapping problem in using this from within a Makefile.PL - relax, it will come with a script to bundle itself in an inc/ directory. -- David Cantrell