How to add include and lib paths to configure/make cycle?

Question

I need a place to install libraries in a linux box I have no su access to. I'm using ~/local[/bin,/lib,/include], but I don't know how can I tell ./configure to look for libraries there (particularly, I'm trying to compile emacs, which needs libgif, which doesn't come in my distro).

I tried adding

export PATH=$PATH:~/local/bin
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/local/lib
export C_INCLUDE_PATH=~/local/include
export CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH=~/local/include

to .bashrc but it doesn't seem to work.

Answer 1

You want a config.site file. Try:

$ mkdir -p ~/local/share
$ cat << EOF > ~/local/share/config.site
CPPFLAGS=-I$HOME/local/include
LDFLAGS=-L$HOME/local/lib
...
EOF

Whenever you invoke an autoconf generated configure script with --prefix=$HOME/local, the config.site will be read and all the assignments will be made for you. CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS should be all you need, but you can make any other desired assignments as well (hence the ... in the sample above). Note that -I flags belong in CPPFLAGS and not in CFLAGS, as -I is intended for the pre-processor and not the compiler.