Readline support in 1.4

[David Shaw]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2004 at 12:10:42PM -0500, Todd wrote:
> I've built 1.4.0 on Fedora Core 2 and haven't been able to get
> readline support working.  The configure output says it has found the
> proper readline libraries, at least partly:
> 
>     checking whether readline support is requested... yes
>     [...]
>     checking for add_history in -lreadline... no
>     checking readline/readline.h usability... yes
>     checking readline/readline.h presence... yes
>     checking for readline/readline.h... yes
> 
> I'm not much for understanding the autoconf tools, but looking a
> little at it, I think it's because of the failure to find add_history
> in -lreadline.  That looks like it leaves HAVE_LIBREADLINE undefined
> in config.h and so readline doesn't get used.
> 
> Is there something wrong with the readline libs on FC2 (too new, too
> old, borked install, sysadmin stupidity)?  Or maybe it's a libtool
> problem?

There was a little problem with the autoconf check for readline in
1.4.0.  It's already been fixed for 1.4.1, but the fix is too large
for me to just send to you as a patch.

The problem is that on some platforms, readline needs other libraries
as a sub-dependency (usually termcap or curses).  It seems that FC2 is
one of those platforms.

You might try doing:

  LIBS="-ltermcap" ./configure

David