Re: AC_PATH_PROG and searching for regular files

[Benoit Sigoure]

Hello John,

On Nov 11, 2007, at 11:10 PM, John Borchardt wrote:

> Hello, all, sorry if this is a very basic question.  I looked in the
> archives briefly but didn't see anything that covered this...
>
>
> I am trying to make the build scripts for someone else's decent-sized
> source tree better.
>
> In the configure.in script for this package, it is looking for the
> paths of various libraries.  But running ./configure generally dies
> when it cannot find these libraries.
>
> The basic problem (as far as I can tell), is that configure.in looks
> for libraries using AC_PATH_PROG, which (best I can tell) only returns
> the path of a file if the file has execute permission.  Libraries are
> not normally executable (as far as I can tell) on my Ubuntu 7.10
> install, so AC_PATH_PROG doesn't find the library, and this is why
> ./configure dies.

That's wrong indeed, you should report this bug upstream.

> My simple question is -- how should I find the location of a library
> or any other regular file such as a C header file?
>
> Looking at the Autoconf documentation, it doesn't look like
> AC_CHECK_FILE, AC_CHECK_LIB, or AC_CHECK_HEADER really do what I need.
>  (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

If you're looking for a library, then what's wrong with  
AC_CHECK_LIB?  For a header, what's wrong with AC_CHECK_HEADER?   
These macros have been designed specifically to this end, so?

> I could no doubt write my own macro (I'd call it AC_PATH_FILE) to do
> what I want.  But since what I want sounds so simple, it makes me
> suspicious that either:
> (1) There already is a macro that does this, or
> (2) What I want to do is fundamentally flawed and I should accomplish
> what I want in a different way
>
>
> Your input is greatly appreciated!

--
Benoit Sigoure aka Tsuna
EPITA Research and Development Laboratory

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