P.S: I had already started working on 3 back in the
time of my GSoC period, but couldn't continue mainly
due to lack of time and other commitments. I'll get back
to it soon.
As a temporary solution, is there a reason not to go for 1?
AFAIK, a devel build already requires all dependencies to
be installed so it shouldn't hurt to require an installation
of zlib too.