installable gnulib library

[Gary V. Vaughan]

I have an (undoubtedly caffeine induced) idea... why not enhance  
gnulib to provide a shim that sits between the system libraries and  
client code that wants to use it without shipping (another copy) of  
the particular parts it depends upon?

If we add a compile-and-install-everything-as-a-library mode to  
gnulib, many GNU packages could stop distributing the MiBs of  
autotools' generated glue, and instead go with a much lighter build  
system that simply depends on gnulib API semantics, and requires that  
gnulib be installed.  For many modern systems, the installed gnulib  
might turn out to be vanishingly small... and for many old and broken  
systems, having just one copy of gnulib in shared memory ought to  
provide a nice improvement to speed and memory utilisation.

Please tell me I'm crazy right now.  Or at least before I waste the  
next few months of my free time figuring out how to do it.

Cheers,
        Gary
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