Paul,
Looking at this bug, I don't understand what exactly you're reporting.
libtheoraenc does depend on libtheoradec, so applications need to link
to both. This is declared in the pkg-config file:
    $ pkg-config --libs theoraenc
    -ltheoraenc -ltheoradec -logg
Is the issue that this dependency exists at all? Do you want
libtheoraenc.so to declare the dependency internally so bare 
-ltheoraenc works on (some) linkers without bothering with
pkg-config?
Petters patch will remove the dependency entirely,
Apologies if this is just reading comprehension fail on my part!
 -r
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