Or maybe just document or implement a functionality that allows to check existence and likability of generic library and generic header? (as I for example need iconv as well)
Once time pass more and more Boost libraries would actually use 3rd part components as reinventing the wheel sometimes quite hard.
I did actually make a start at boiler plating all this so it works more like autoconf - take a look at the attached example - the thing to look at is the zlib example right at the end of the Jamfile - the rest of the Jamfile is the actual boilerplate plus some tests. Unfortunately there are still a few warts in the code but it should give you the general idea.
Even so, if several folks are testing for the same thing, it still makes sense to centralize the tests.
Cheers, John.
Small note: Generally it is very simple to do a standard template like: int main() { return 0; } And it would fail if you would try to link with not-existing library, no need to specify anything unusual. You don't need to call any function explicitly. This is the way autoconf works. Artyom