Re: installation instructions on OpenBSD and FreeBSD

[Eric Siegerman]

On Thu, Mar 15, 2001 at 03:38:34PM +0100, Bruno Haible wrote:
> 
> Marc Espie, maintainer of gcc for OpenBSD, wrote:
> 
> > The gcc that is the system compiler on OpenBSD is never going to look under
> > /usr/local.
> 
> The same problem affects also FreeBSD and NetBSD.

This isn't specific to BSDs at all.  It'll be an issue on any
system where the package is being built with the system compiler.
(That this will only be the case when the system compiler is GCC
is an unwarranted assumption.)  If the warning is included, it
should be more generic, perhaps something like:

        On some systems, the compiler doesn't search for include
        files in /usr/local/include, and the linker doesn't
        search for libraries in /usr/local/lib.  Therefore this
        package won't find any packages that have been installed
        in /usr/local.  To overcome this problem, the following
        options are recommended:

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

(I've also tweaked the wording a bit.)

> Therefore I propose the following changes to the INSTALL file.

I don't really have an opinion on whether system-specific hints
belong in INSTALL; I can see the arguments both ways.  But they
do belong *someplace*!  The obvious place would be a FAQ, or a
"Hints" page on the autoconf site; if the latter existed, INSTALL
would only need to provide the URL.

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        address@hidden
|  |  /
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not
necessarily a good idea.
        - RFC 1925 (quoting an unnamed source)