[Mapserver-dev] configure script problems with multiple GD

[Daniel Morissette]

Sean Gillies wrote:
> Users continue to report problems with the configure script
> not picking up their own local installations of GD.  After
> looking in configure.in, I'm not sure that GD_LIBDIR is
> being properly set before we use AC_CHECK_LIB to look for
> gdImageSetAntialias (test for GD version > 2.0.12), or that
> adding -L$GD_LIBDIR will work to push the user-configured
> GD location ahead of other system GD installations.
> 

It's clunky but it works for me with a local copy of GD: I always use a 
local GD since the system GD is always too old. It's always possible 
that it doesn't work in some specific cases, if that's the case then a 
bug should be filed with all the details.


> I'm also not experienced enough with autoconf to fix this
> myself.  Could we set the right person to this task before
> a final 4.4.0 release?
> 
> Not every user will have the option of removing every
> conflicting GD from their system, or of modifying their
> linker's system search order.
> 

Users are only required to remove the -devel part of the library in the 
system dirs. It is possible to keep several runtime copies of GD on the 
system (i.e. several libgd.so.x.y.z) for existing programs to continue 
to run. The problems happen only when you have multiple copies of the 
header files and of libgd.so (e.g. the gd-devel RPM).

Perhaps it would be possible to tweak the makefiles and configure script 
to compile/link with one devel copy of GD in preference over the others 
but we would need someone who has time to research and/or knows how to 
do that.

Daniel
-- 
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  Daniel Morissette               dmorissette at dmsolutions.ca
  DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
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