Hello,

Am trying to install PHP by running the "configure" command but saw 2 WARNINGS about not having defined "datarootdir".

Executed this.....
Got these 2 warnings in configure.log.....
Looking into this further here I found that there is a change since Autoconf 2.60, the datarootdir variable is introduced and it should have been defined in the "Makefile.in" file. Guess PHP.net didn't do this properly?

So I added the line "datarootdir = @datarootdir@" in "Makefile.in". Now I need to run "autoconf" but it failed to generate the "configure" script. This is what I executed.....
But the "configure" file hasn't been changed.

Am I heading into a wrong direction to solve this problem?

Well that's the wrong way, you probably need to start with aclocal ... etc ... I always need to look it up myself because you rarely start a new project

So, either look here for great overall information on GNU autotools:
http://sourceware.org/autobook/autob...obook_toc.html
(including the correct command sequence to create the various files)

Or just use a catch-it-all "magic" script like http://freshmeat.net/projects/buildconf/

Oh, btw, if you don't have the configure.ac (or configure.in) file, you're out of luck. Quite often, maintainers do not distribute it in the tarballs...

Hello,

Actually I added the path where "autoconf" is in to my PATH variable and calls it directly from where my Makefile.in is. It now generated a new "configure" file. However, same results unfortunately. Perhaps it's like what you said, I don't have a "configure.in" file so it didn't generate the proper "configure" file.

BTW, I found a lot of Makefile.in. Check this out. Does that mean all of them needs to be changed? Would there be any harm with those warning messages?

[root@test httpd-2.2.15]# find . | grep Makefile.in
./support/Makefile.in
./server/mpm/prefork/Makefile.in
./server/mpm/experimental/event/Makefile.in
./server/mpm/mpmt_os2/Makefile.in
./server/mpm/worker/Makefile.in
./server/mpm/beos/Makefile.in
./server/mpm/Makefile.in
./server/Makefile.in
./test/Makefile.in
./os/unix/Makefile.in
./os/os2/Makefile.in
./os/beos/Makefile.in
./os/Makefile.in
./Makefile.in
./modules/proxy/Makefile.in
./modules/debug/Makefile.in
./modules/filters/Makefile.in
./modules/aaa/Makefile.in
./modules/echo/Makefile.in
./modules/arch/win32/Makefile.in
./modules/ssl/Makefile.in
./modules/experimental/Makefile.in
./modules/database/Makefile.in
./modules/http/Makefile.in
./modules/test/Makefile.in
./modules/cache/Makefile.in
./modules/generators/Makefile.in
./modules/metadata/Makefile.in
./modules/dav/main/Makefile.in
./modules/dav/fs/Makefile.in
./modules/dav/lock/Makefile.in
./modules/Makefile.in
./modules/loggers/Makefile.in
./modules/mappers/Makefile.in
./modules/ldap/Makefile.in
./srclib/pcre/Makefile.in
./srclib/apr-util/xml/expat/Makefile.in
./srclib/apr-util/xml/expat/lib/Makefile.in
./srclib/apr-util/test/Makefile.in
./srclib/apr-util/Makefile.in
./srclib/apr/test/internal/Makefile.in
./srclib/apr/test/Makefile.in
./srclib/apr/Makefile.in
./srclib/Makefile.in

I think $datarootdir is typically ${prefix}/share, so if all the Makefiles assume exactly that and ./configure doesn't change it, I don't think the warning messages are really harmful. IIRC, with the introduction of $datarootdir, some more specific variables like docdir or datadir coult now be set relative to datarootdir, but when you use an old ./configure script, they are set relative to $prefix and it's all well, too.

If you don't have either configure.in or configure.ac (they are the same, configure.ac is just the newer name), you cannot generate a meaningful configure-script using autoconf.