How do we treat additional/optional library (read codecs) in the vlc source tree? [e.g. libmad] and other questions

[Jean-Paul Saman]

While adding libmad audio decoder to vlc some questions arise. 

1. How do we treat additional/optional library (read codecs) in the vlc
source tree?
- I'd like to keep e.g. libmad source code separated from the vlc plugin
(mad_adec). For reasons of maintenance (easy upgrading to newer libmad
library) and forcing to use the libmad library through header file
'mad.h' only. Of course some merging in configure-scripts will have to
be done, but that is as far as I'd like to go.
- Treat libmad audio decoder as a library (either static or dynamic). In
this way it is possible on an iPaq to let applications share the library
without having to staticly link it with every app. This saves valuable
FlashROM space.
- Where to put those optional or additional codec libraries? My first
thought was to use <top-level dir>/extras for this, but it can also be
e.g.: <top-level dir>/lib which is perhaps a better place.

 
2. Is vlc going to support 'make dist-ipaq' ?
The current source code directory does not provide a generic mechanism
for where to keep the necessary files for this. E.g. vlc.spec (redhat)
is in the top-level directory and there is a debian directory. Shouldn't
we solve this in a more generic way, e.g.: 
<top-level dir>/dist/redhat
<top-level dir>/dist/debian
<top-level dir>/dist/familiar (for ipaq)
etc.

What are you're thoughts?

Greetings,
Jean-Paul Saman