[ttgurney]

Oh I'm sure the actual work to compile those packages is not much. It's more to do with keeping the number of packages on my system to a minimum.

Actually I would not be surprised if the JavaScript engine can be omitted with just a little bit of patching work... assuming there's not actually a build configuration that leaves it out. I've found that with some software projects and their dependencies, "required" does not always mean required.