Finding libraries to link with and autoconf resources?

[John E Hein]

Garrett Cooper wrote at 22:46 -0800 on Feb 10, 2007:
 > Are there any global scripts or options to pass to autoconf that sets  
 > the -L option for gcc properly?

If the configure script doesn't support --with-png=/your/path/to/png,
then you can force feed it by using env vars.  As in:

env LDFLAGS=-L/your/path/to/png/lib CPPFLAGS=-I/your/path/to/png/include configure

In your freebsd port, there is a common idiom that looks like this
in the Makefile:

LDFLAGS+=-L/your/path/to/png/lib
CPPFLAGS+=-I/your/path/to/png/include
CONFIGURE_ENV=CPPFLAGS="${CPPFLAGS} LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS}

(see also bsd.port.mk and the Porter's Handbook)

ports@ is a better place to ask such questions, by the way.