Re: how to use libraries in /usr/local

[Russ Allbery]

Steven G Johnson <address@hidden> writes:

> What's wrong with just doing:

> ./configure LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/lib -L/usr/pubsw/lib"
> CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include -I/usr/pubsw/include"

See my followup message.  That doesn't take care of shared libraries
across multiple platforms, for one.  (That's the really major thing that
it doesn't take care of, but there are others.)  I'd also rather not add
in every possible location that software might be installed when that
software isn't actually needed; I'd rather that autoconf only add in the
flags that are necessary.

> and so on?  (You could also set these environment variables in your
> config.site so that you don't have to do them for each configure run.)  
> It boggles my mind to learn how many people don't know about this...

I know about them.  They're just not sufficient.

> Besides, anything other than specifying the -L and -I flags directly is
> perhaps non-portable, since autoconf has no way of knowing whether your
> compiler uses -L/-I or some other flags to specify paths.

Then autoconf should figure it out.  That's the whole point of autoconf;
so far as possible, autoconf should take care of the portability problems,
not the installer and not the package author.

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>