Port dependencies

[Chris Telting]

Just in a thoughtful mood and thought I'd to the question to the cloud.

One of my biggest gripes with the ports system is dependency hell.  
Ports link against so my optional components and pull them into the 
install.  Libraries and components are built based on make file 
defines.  But this doesn't have to be so.  It's possible and easy enough 
to check a running system for which libraries are installed and only if 
a feature is enabled to load the library.  The number of console 
programs that want to pull in X window or kde is my boggling.  Knowing 
how to program myself when I see a "make config" menu on every single 
port it makes me want to cry.  I think the "make config" menus should 
have everything checked by default and only be provided to prevent 
things from being compiled such as for embedded devices.

My question is why is this so?  Why can't programs do more run time 
configuration?  Is a configuration run time system library needed to 
make it easier?

Chris