[tlbuild] compilation problem: curses

[Karl Berry]

    realized that curses.h file was missing on the system. Would it be
    feasible to catch a few of such cases (including fontconfig) somewhere
    closer to the beginning of building process? 

Not that I can imagine.  It does what it does when it needs to do it.
Trying to induce "early" checks sounds like a nightmare to me.
It configures the whole thing before building anything.  If configure
takes "two or three hours", that is one slow machine.

Unless Peter has a brainstorm ...

Anyway, nearly all our dependencies are so common as to be a non-issue.
For curses, I am thinking we should get rid of dialog (not worth hassles
like these), but have to review/update the tiny number of places it is
used first.

karl