Greetings -
--On 19 May 2006 06:48:33 +1000 grant beattie <grant@grunta.com> wrote:
I disagree with adding /usr/sfw to the default paths that are searched. what if you have another installation of it somewhere else and want to use that one? this approach closes doors for other sysadmins who may not wish to use /usr/sfw mysql.
the right way to do this is to set CPPFLAGS/CFLAGS/LDFLAGS in your environment when you call configure. configure will then find the libraries and headers in exactly where you've told it to.
leaving things to chance by trying to be smart about auto detecting stuff in configure is almost always fraught with danger, and at the very least it can make life difficult for others.
Could I voice my agreement with Grant: I lost nearly 2 days trying to get Dovecot to build and work with SSL support. Why? Because I was trying to use the Blastwave distribution of OpenSSL: I had remember to add the "-I..." to the environment variable but had overlooked "-L..." (being so used to the run-time link editor's search-path resolving these).
The trouble was that a Sun FreeWare version of OpenSSL had crept onto the system that was older than the Blastwave one, and Dovecot's autoconfigure scripts use of "pkg-config" had sniffed the latter out to link against.
After I'd eventually convinced myself I hadn't mucked up the certificates etc I found the real problem and easily fixed it.
But for me the less sniffing around an autoconfigure system does to track down libraries the better. In my case a comiple/link time "unresolved symbols" would have given me the clue I needed within minutes, rather than giving me an executable that crashed when I tried to establish a secure connection and a mystery to solve.
Cheers, Mike B-)
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