Plugins, OS flavours

Hello,

An interesting problem was posed by Patrick Mauritz in SmartZilla 504.

http://smartzilla.loria.fr/show_bug.cgi?id=504

The need is well exposed by Patrick: "solaris needs -lsocket -lnsl for
various network related functions (bind, recv, ..), while other unices
might not. instead of adding another system type this value, together
with a small change to libs/paths lookup, allows to stay with the "UNIX"
configuration while still providing different configurations where
necessary."

I have the following question: how do we ensure that any plugin uses the
same "flavour" convention, since:
  - plugins may be distributed by independant third-parties
  - Unix flavours could be Solaris vs. AIX vs. Linux for example, but it
could also be the version of the same OS; depending on the plugin, it
may be relevant or not...

Should we have a convention? Should the compiler enforce it? How?

Any thoughts are welcome.

Best regards,

-- 
Cyril ADRIAN                                            Vt Sol inter planetas,
[email protected]                      Ita MVSICA inter Artes Liberales
http://www.cadrian.net/~cyril                                  in medio radiat
                                                      -- Heinrich Schütz, 1640