Should use 'xml2-config' if it can be found in $PATH to find out libxml2's header and library file locations

[aq2-sanger]

Hello,

The way libxml2 expects to be used when installed from source is that you call 'xml2-config --cflags --libs' and it outputs the flags needed to pass to GCC so it can find its headers and libraries. That's why libxml2 puts its stuff under 'libxml2/libxml', so even if you install to /usr or /usr/local, you still have to use this to get the header locations.

If Nokogiri used xml2-config to get the locations of the headers/libraries, then many installations of libxml2 would suddenly start working without having to pass in custom header or library file locations when building the Nogokiri gem.

Thanks

[flavorjones]

Hello!

This seems like a reasonable idea. I'm guessing the proposed behavior would be:

• if any of the --with-xml2-lib et al arguments are provided on the command line at installation time, use those.
• else, check if xml2-config is somewhere in the user's $PATH, and if so, use its output
• else, fall back to the current fallback behavior, which is rather ad-hoc.

Sound about right?

[aq2-sanger]

That seems about as good as I can think of, yes.

Thanks