Re: RFC: Macros for libs

[Steven G. Johnson]

Kevin Ryde wrote:
> It'd be nice if AC_CHECK_LIB let you specify some headers.

This has occurred to me too from time to time--functions that turn out
to be macros on some systems are fairly common.

Note, however, that in this case you must also (at least) specify the
number of arguments the function expects, or a prototype call or
something.  The semantics of AC_CHECK_LIB would be so substantially
changed that I'd be inclined to suggest writing a separate macro.  e.g.
AC_CHECK_LIB_MACRO or something like that; it could also call
AC_CHECK_HEADER first to ensure that the header is available.

On another subject, people very often implement an idiom
like: --with-gmp=<-L flags>.  I'd be inclined to discourage this practice
and tell people that their users should just set CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS
instead.

Steven