Can you suggest steps, or perhaps a primer or howto, for diagnosing this kind of library issue in general, or this one in particular?

I already gave it to you :) You let ldd tell you which dynamic libraries Fuse.so needs, and then you add the directory paths where those libraries reside to LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

Its like managing your %PATH%

Check out the things I linked, they're starting points that helped me

• A Guide to Installing Modules
• ExtUtils::MakeMaker
• http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/cpp/Environment-Variables.html#Environment-Variables
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_(computing)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_linker
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_link_library
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_build_system
• http://linux.die.net/man/1/pkg-config
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configure_%28computing%29
• same advice from previous threads LD_LIBRARY_PATH site:perlmonks.org
• short version, assuming everything standard succeeds and nothing require special steps detailed in INSTALL/README file

  libfuse...$  sh configure --enable-static --enable-shared
  libfuse...$  make
  libfuse...$  make test
  libfuse...$  make install
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  later

  export FUSELIBS=pkg-config --libs fuse
  export FUSELIBS=pkg-config --cflags fuse
  
  or
  
  export FUSELIBS=pkg-config --static --libs fuse
  export FUSECFLAGS=pkg-config --static --cflags fuse
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  later

  Fuse-0.09_4$ perl Makefile.PL "LIBS=-L/where/lubfuse.so/lives -lfuse" 
  +"INC=-I/where/libfuse.h/lives"
  
  or
  
  Fuse-0.09_4$ perl Makefile.PL "LIBS=$FUSECFLAGS"  "INC=$FUSECFLAGS"
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  then

  make
  make test
  make install
  [download]

  Sometimes Makefile.PL (or Build.PL) authors try to help you, so you have to pass options a different way

Hope this helps