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

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.

This question is related to bash makefile linker configure autoconf

The answer is


This took a while to get right. I had this issue when cross-compiling in Ubuntu for an ARM target. I solved it with:

PATH=$PATH:/ccpath/bin CC=ccname-gcc AR=ccname-ar LD=ccname-ld CPPFLAGS="-nostdinc -I/ccrootfs/usr/include ..." LDFLAGS=-L/ccrootfs/usr/lib ./autogen.sh --build=`config.guess` --host=armv5tejl-unknown-linux-gnueabihf

Notice CFLAGS is not used with autogen.sh/configure, using it gave me the error: "configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables". In the build environment I was using an autogen.sh script was provided, if you don't have an autogen.sh script substitute ./autogen.sh with ./configure in the command above. I ran config.guess on the target system to get the --host parameter.

After successfully running autogen.sh/configure, compile with:

PATH=$PATH:/ccpath/bin CC=ccname-gcc AR=ccname-ar LD=ccname-ld CPPFLAGS="-nostdinc -I/ccrootfs/usr/include ..." LDFLAGS=-L/ccrootfs/usr/lib CFLAGS="-march=... -mcpu=... etc." make

The CFLAGS I chose to use were: "-march=armv5te -fno-tree-vectorize -mthumb-interwork -mcpu=arm926ej-s". It will take a while to get all of the include directories set up correctly: you might want some includes pointing to your cross-compiler and some pointing to your root file system includes, and there will likely be some conflicts.

I'm sure this is not the perfect answer. And I am still seeing some include directories pointing to / and not /ccrootfs in the Makefiles. Would love to know how to correct this. Hope this helps someone.


Set LDFLAGS and CFLAGS when you run make:

$ LDFLAGS="-L/home/me/local/lib" CFLAGS="-I/home/me/local/include" make

If you don't want to do that a gazillion times, export these in your .bashrc (or your shell equivalent). Also set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include /home/me/local/lib:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/home/me/local/lib

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