Lighttpd

I'm curious, isn't it easier to ensure the path contains the right libs?

The current configure script doesn't look for the pcre libs or headers. It just looks for "pcre-config", and asks it where to find the libs and headers. When cross-compiling, these values are probably wrong.

One could create a "pcre-config" that returns the results you want, insert it in your path ahead of the pcre-config that's already on the system, and then call the configure script. However, I think this patch is more sensible than that.

sshore-iders wrote:

However, I think this patch is more sensible than that.

Why? Sure, it's an easy short-term work-around. But it doesn't make sense.

Olaf-van-der-Spek wrote:

Why? Sure, it's an easy short-term work-around. But it doesn't make sense.

Could you elaborate on what doesn't make sense?

It seems that this fixes a problem when compiling for a different arch without changing anything for regular users.

It's not too bad, but ideally you'd want this to work without manually specifying paths, even when cross-compiling.

Olaf-van-der-Spek wrote:

It's not too bad, but ideally you'd want this to work without manually specifying paths, even when cross-compiling.

Too bad pkg-config was not designed for cross-compiling. Many projects have issues with cross-compiling due to the use of pkg-config and end up having to fallback to other means of finding the libraries because of this. There are some projects that do not use pkg-config at all because it does not work with cross-compiling.

Is fixing pkg-config that hard?

Olaf-van-der-Spek wrote:

sshore-iders wrote:

However, I think this patch is more sensible than that.

Conventionally whenever I have cross-compiled, I've used a build root, which would make this patch unnecessary.

Why? Sure, it's an easy short-term work-around. But it doesn't make sense.

That said, I don't see a down-side to making specifiable search paths on --with-xxx args possible. I can't see it breaking any existing build systems with respect to relying on particular configure script behavior. It is certainly an enhancement.

That said, this updates for building only pcre. If applied, it would be best if the patch also updated the autoconf rules for fam, webdav, zlib, bzip2, and so on, to also allow for specifiable paths. In for a penny, in for a pound.

I have submitted a patch to allow specifying directories on more of the (optional) lighttpd dependencies, including pcre, zlib, bzip2, gdbm, memcached. Patches will be accepted for others, as people need them, but please file feature requests, not bugs. Don't worry. Feature requests -- especially those with patches -- will still be picked up.

I extended the patch to include sqlite3, libxml2, libuuid, FAM/gamin.