We've attempted to bundle libsnappy into the C Driver, to provide Snappy compression on systems where libsnappy has not already been installed. We do this very oddly, however: instead of compiling Snappy's code into the C Driver, we actually compile libsnappy as a separate installable (or several installables) and install it into the system library path alongside libmongoc. This has caused many problems for people who want to link against libmongoc: they must now add -lsnappy to the link line to link to libmongoc, and they need a C++ linker.

If we compiled Snappy's source into libmongoc, then libmongoc would depend on the C++ standard library, and it would still require a C++ linker.

This is not worth the mess for the sake of better compression without depending on a system library. Users who want Snappy will need to install it before building the driver. We'll unbundle Snappy in 1.8.2.