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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T15:42:16+00:00

I’m trying to write a configure.ac file such that the resulting configure script searches

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I’m trying to write a configure.ac file such that the resulting configure script searches for a library directory containing a given static library e.g. libsomething.a. How can I do this? At the moment I have it check just one location with:

AC_CHECK_FILE([/usr/local/lib/libsomething.a],[AC_SUBST(libsomething,"-L/usr/local/lib -lsomething")],[AC_SUBST(libcfitsio,'')])

But I want it to try and find it automatically. And if the library isn’t in one of the default locations, I’d like configure to say that the library wasn’t found and that a custom location can be specified with –use-something=path as is usually done. So I also need to then check if –use-something=path is provided. I’m pretty new at creating configure files, and the M4 documentation isn’t very easy to follow, so would appreciate any help.

Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The best way to figure this out is to look at other autoconf macros that do something similar. Autoconf macros are an amalgam of Bourne shell script and M4 code, so they can literally solve any computable problem.

    Here’s a link to a macro I wrote for MySQL++ that does this: mysql++.m4.

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