How to get to dependencies?

[Fernan Aguero <fernan iib unsam edu ar>]

Dear gnomes:

Happened to me. I'm sure it also happened to everyone else. You want to
install X and you need first to get Y. But Y needs Z to compile, so you go
out for Z ... and it can go like this ... you know.

I am trying to compile Balsa-1.0.1 with gtkhtml support. 
I have at hand gtkhtml 0.6.1, and 0.7. 

0.6.1 compiles OK, but it appears as though the Balsa configuration
(pre-compile) does not detect it. Happened to me before, i needed the
-devel package also (gtkhtml-devel in this case). However, finding for
gnome packages and libraries is a pain. The gnome home page at
http://www.gnome.org sucks. There is no search available for the site!!!

When i searched for gtkhtml on rpmfind.net i've learned that this package
is at ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/unstable/sources/gtkhtml/, however
there is no gtkhtml-devel package there.

Also, when searching for gtkhtml in freshmeat it finds an entry with a
download link, but there's no homepage for the project ... so no place to
look for this package.

On the other hand gtkhtml-0.7 does not configure, because it needs this:

'checking for Gnome App libraries (GAL) >= 0.2... configure: error: Did not
find GnomeAppLib (GAL) installed'

I don't know what GnomeAppLib is, but searching for this fails. Searching
for 'Gnome App libraries' also fails ... thanks god i also tried searching
for 'gal' because it turned out that there are some gal-0.4.1 packages
listed at rpmfind.net 

(as a sidenote, i don't know what the heck I'm doing, don't know if this
gal-0.4.1 will provide me with a GnomeAppLib ... it is just my last hope at
this ...)

Now gal-0.4.1 won't configure because my libxml is not supported yet (needs
1.8.8 and i have 2.0)

Gave up now.

---
Question now is how does the Gnome Project organizes itself?
Is there any central repository of libraries, files and packages?
Why isn't a search implemented in the gnome web site?
---

Thanks in advance for your time. 
I appreciate your reading up to this point.

--

Fernan Aguero