--with and AC_CHECK_LIB

[Mitch Davis]

Hello autoconf people,

I have two newbie questions regarding AC_CHECK_LIB.

- In the first scenario, I would like to use
  AC_CHECK_LIB to check for a library which might
  be installed in a non-standard place.  If I pass
  --with-thelib=/somedir to configure, can I get
  AC_CHECK_LIB to look for thelib here too (ie,
  to add -L/somedir to the link line when doing
  the test)?

  Alternatively, is there some other way of giving
  configure a hint about where to look for a certain
  library in a non-standard place?

- In the second scenario, I want to configure a
  number of packages, then come back later and build
  them all.  The problem is that the configure for
  package B might try to detect the library built
  as part of package A, which hasn't been built yet.

  Is there a way I can pass something like 
  "--with-thelib=/somedir" to configure, to say
  "if you're testing for this library, trust me,
  it's here"?

(The software in question is "mjpegtools" for Linux,
and I'm trying to fix the autoconf stuff and spec
file so it builds from source RPM correctly.  I can't
do much about the unfortunate "four-packages-in-one
tarball" approach taken by the project).

Any responses would be gratefully received.

Thanks,

Mitch.
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