INSTALL matters

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

I'm trying to install guile-1.8.5 on MacOS X 10.5. I've already installed
gmp-4.2.2 with the same --prefix option as I use for guile, and the 
configuration
bails out nevertheless:

$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/data/local-macos CPPFLAGS=-Wall
...
checking for __gmpz_init in -lgmp... no
configure: error: GNU MP not found, see README

guile's README has two paragraphs about this topic. Both are less than
helpful:

  - The first paragraph says that the installer should consider -I options,
    but does not say how to pass them (CFLAGS? wrong! CPPFLAGS!), and moreover
    does not even mention that LDFLAGS need to be set as well (for -L and
    rpath related options).

  - The second paragraph recommends to rebuild GCC to match --prefix. This
    is just gross. It takes a novice user half a dozen attempts to find out
    the right set of configure options for building gcc, and then the build
    itself takes 10 hours and requires 500 MB of swap space.

Less than helpful, really.

Can you please add an option --with-gmp-prefix or --with-gmp, with which the
installer can *easily* specify where he has installed GMP?

Precedents:
- mpfr-2.3.1 has
  --with-gmp=DIR          GMP install directory
  --with-gmp-include=DIR  GMP include directory
  --with-gmp-lib=DIR      GMP lib directory
  --with-gmp-build=DIR    GMP build directory
- cln-1.2.2 has
  --with-gmp[=DIR]        use external low-level functions from GNU MP
                          (installed in prefix DIR) [default=yes].

Similarly, can you please add an option --with-readline-prefix or
--with-libreadline-prefix, with which the installer can *easily* specify where
he has installed GNU readline?

Precedents:
- GNU clisp 2.44.1 has
  --with-libreadline-prefix[=DIR]  search for libreadline in DIR/include and 
DIR/lib
  --without-libreadline-prefix     don't search for libreadline in includedir 
and libdir
- gnulib has a readline.m4 autoconf macro that provides
  --with-libreadline-prefix[=DIR]  search for libreadline in DIR/include and 
DIR/lib
  --without-libreadline-prefix     don't search for libreadline in includedir 
and libdir

As an installer, I'm not going to spend time trying to see which LDFLAGS I need
to set for a package to recognize the libraries that I have installed. I expect
the package to do this by itself.

Bruno