Question: Why do you build japser with the following flags?

     --disable-libjpeg --disable-opengl

Answer:

Libjpeg is not needed by wgrib2.  The makefile should work when
the system doesn't have libjpeg installed.

Opengl is not needed by wgrib2. Makefile should still work when the 
system doesn't have the opengl installed.

The wgrib2 makefile compiles the libraries in a manner optimized for wgrib2.
The libraries are not meant for general use.  For example, the netcdf library
doesn't have a fortran interface because I want the makefile to
work if a user lacks a fortran compiler. 

Question: Should I "fix" the wgrib2 makefile to point from g2clib v1.8 to g2clib v1.9?

Answer:

The g2clib v1.8 that is included with the wgrib2 source code has fixes that haven't appeared 
in the v1.9 from NCO.