That new info makes me wonder as well. I guess we'll find out! Either way, I don't think I'll be able to reactivate/fix such a large chunk of code before the 3.5.12 release; it will probably have to wait 6 months or so for 3.5.13.
As I mentioned the problem could be unrelated.
I use rwalld to keep my htpc communicating with my office system, which is the computer I spend the most time. I get nice little popups at my office machine. I'm always tinkering and experimenting with my htpc and I need the communications mechanism to know what the htpc is doing so I can monitor.
I might very well have migrated to Debian this past spring if I had solved that one little problem. I could still migrate to Debian if I ever solve that problem.
I played with the configure parameters you provided.
First pass, all parameters: DO_NOT_COMPILE='dcopperl kalyptus qtsharp xparts python'
Compiled.
Second pass: DO_NOT_COMPILE='kalyptus qtsharp xparts python'
Compiled.
Third pass: DO_NOT_COMPILE='python'
Compiled.
Perhaps then we're no longer talking about large chunks. Just one element. At least now we know the problem area.
Package size remains at about 8 MB. Obvious then is the python bindings comprise a significant portion of the package.
Of course, python bindings are important to many people.
Amarok scripts are written in python, but I don't know whether those scripts depend upon kdebindings or are just run external to Amarok.