Why is lastfm a required dependency?

[Ralf Jung]

Hi list,

I also vote for making liblastfm an optional dependency. As others pointed 
out, in the current situation requiring it forces people who use trunk to 
either manually get the library and having one more manually compiled and 
installed package (which I personally try to keep to a minimum). The only 
alternative is to manually patch the cmake file not to require it anymore, 
which is not only inconvenient but also proves that it is not actually a 
dependency of amarok itself but of one of its plugins. Isn't it the point of 
making it a plugin that one can use Amarok without it without any side-effects?

Besides, the argument that distros could potentially not build not Amarok with 
it opens the question what the point of "optional" dependencies is at all, 
since this applies to all of them. Distros could also ship Amarok without 
support for the iPod, MTP or mp3tunes, but obviously nobody feared that people 
would miss that feature without even knowing it existed. Distros usually ship 
Amarok with them enabled, but people compiling trunk do not have to get these 
libraries and all of their dependencies, too, which is a good thing. I use 
trunk not only to get the latest features and to help testing, but also to 
have the freedom of defining the build options myself, and requiring optional 
libraries restricts exactly that freedom.
I really wonder in which way iPod support is less important that last.fm in 
that the one is optional to be built and the other one required. Now I just 
hope you don't make libgpod a required dependency ;-)

Kind regards,
Ralf Jung