There's a failure mode where the compilation test for
popt fails because popt is mandatory, yet the test failed
because of an incompletely specified neon -> gnutls linkage.

Does it make sense to test for mandatory (and mostly
standalone) libraries like libpopt earlier in configure.ac?

Here's what I would do (but I'll leave the AutoFu to Ralf) below.

There are perhaps a few other reorganizations, like keyutils, that
perhaps should be done earlier as well.

73 de Jeff

Index: configure.ac
===================================================================
RCS file: /v/rpm/cvs/rpm/configure.ac,v
retrieving revision 2.281
diff -u -b -B -w -p -r2.281 configure.ac
--- configure.ac        29 Jan 2008 14:43:52 -0000      2.281
+++ configure.ac        5 Feb 2008 02:46:42 -0000
@@ -909,6 +909,13 @@ dnl ##

  AC_MSG_HEADER([THIRD-PARTY LIBRARIES (2/2)])

+dnl # POPT
+RPM_CHECK_LIB(
+    [POPT], [popt],
+    [popt], [poptGetContext], [popt.h],
+    [yes,external], [],
+    [], [AC_MSG_ERROR([mandatory POPT library not found])])
+
  dnl # ZLib
  RPM_CHECK_LIB(
      [ZLib], [zlib],
@@ -972,13 +979,6 @@ RPM_CHECK_LIB(
        fi
      ], [])

-dnl # POPT
-RPM_CHECK_LIB(
-    [POPT], [popt],
-    [popt], [poptGetContext], [popt.h],
-    [yes,external], [],
-    [], [AC_MSG_ERROR([mandatory POPT library not found])])
-
  dnl # Berkeley-DB & SQLite
  DBLIBSRCS=""
  RPM_CHECK_LIB(