Different linkers at different times?

[Kenneth Pronovici]

I'm cross-posting this to the autoconf and libtool lists, because I'm not
sure whose "jurisdiction" this is.

I accidentally found this while trying to compile libxml2-2.4.5 under Solaris.
I say "accidentally" because was compiling without /usr/local/lib in my 
$LD_LIBRARY_PATH, which was probably silly.  However, I think this might 
still be a legitimate concern. 

The problem is with the AC_CHECK_LIB(z, gzread) call in libxml's configure.in.
What happens is that the configure script uses gcc and finds -lz successfully,
and everything moves on as if libz is available.  However, libtool uses 
/usr/ccs/bin/ld when attempting to link the library, and is unable to find 
-lz at that point.

I guess this is because gcc always looks in /usr/local/lib by default and the 
Solaris build tools don't.  I can work around this by specifying the exact
location of zlib (--with-zlib=/usr/local) or by forcing use of the Solaris
C compiler (export CC="/usr/ccs/bin/cc")... but it seems like it's not good
that I can get myself into a situation where the configure script will succeed
but the build will always fail.

I've rebuilt the configure script with autoconf 2.52, and I still see the
problem.  It looks like libxml was developed with libtool 1.4.   

Is this worth worrying about, or does this fall into the "well, the silly
user [me] should set up $LD_LIBRARY_PATH properly" category?

Thanks!

KEN

-- 
Kenneth J. Pronovici <address@hidden>
Personal Homepage: http://www.skyjammer.com/~pronovic/
"I have zero tolerance for zero-tolerance policies."