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.

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.

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

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.

for example, build git usig $HOME/curl

package=git
version=2.17.0

tarUrl=https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/$package-$version.tar.gz
install(){
   ./configure --prefix=$HOME
   LDFLAGS="-L$HOME/lib" CFLAGS="-I$HOME/include" make -j 2
   make install
}
if [ -e $package-$version.tar.gz ]; then
   echo "cache"
else
   wget --no-check-certificate ${tarUrl}
   tar -xvf $package-$version.tar.gz
fi
cd ./$package-$version
install