Re: libreadline and Debian 5 - not missing just badly named

* Tom Lane (tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us) wrote:
> "J. Bagg" <j(dot)bagg(at)kent(dot)ac(dot)uk> writes:
> > I've just had the common problem with not finding the readline library
> > while compiling/linking 8.4.4 on a new linux (Debian 5 - lenny). Nothing
> > seemed to work: --with-libraries=/lib and pointing CFLAGs there all
> > failed to find readline. The installed packages though said that it was
> > present.
>
> > The problem was that this linux had libreadline.so.5.2 with the symlink
> > libreadline.so.5 not libreadline.so. In other words the link had too
> > specific a name for the configure checks.
>
> > Simple solution: create the correct symlink - libreadline.so
>
> On Red Hat distributions, what lack of a .so symlink means is that you
> forgot to install the readline-devel subpackage (or in general, the
> -devel subpackage for whatever library is involved). I believe Debian
> uses a similar convention.
>
> The -devel package also generally carries the include files (.h files)
> you need to compile anything using the library, so I'd sort of expect
> that you don't get too much further with just a manually created symlink.

Exactly. On Debian, the package you're looking for is libreadline5-dev.

Thanks,

Stephen