Seriously, one of the most annoying things about linux and open source is the constant changing of library names and versions and the inconsistent use of pkg-config or the lack their of!
OK so the configure script for cairo-compmgr does a check for vala which goes fine. It knows where the compiler is and what to do. But later in the script it uses pkg-config to double check the library dependencies and it can't find vala... why? well because the script checks for the library 'vala-1.0'...
