I'm trying to install XDrawChem on a Mandrake 9.2 box. I installed the most recent version of OpenBabel and I can't get XDC to ./configure. I've read other posts about PKG_COFIG_PATH, but I don't know if they relate to what my problem is.

[root@localhost xdrawchem-1.9]# ./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config
checking for openbabel >= 1.100.2... Package openbabel was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `openbabel.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'openbabel' found

configure: error: Library requirements (openbabel >= 1.100.2) not met; consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if your libraries are in a nonstandard prefix so pkg-config can find them.

*******************
When I do a "locate openbabel.pc" I get the following results:

/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/openbabel.pc
/usr/shared-drive/Software/openbabel-1.100.2/openbabel.pc.in
/usr/shared-drive/Software/openbabel-1.100.2/openbabel.pc

I'm not really familiar with setting environment variables, so any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Perry

Don't know this package, but typically there would be a README or INSTALL text file in the source tarball. At the same place where you are running ./configure.

Try finding it and follow instructions. Some packages default to installign in /usr . .. other to /opt (rare). you can set the variable and export it from from .bashrc file in the home or on command line itself and rerun command.

most likely the problem is missing lib/package

A lot of times the issue is that some of the packages want the development version of the package.
So you might have to download the "whateverpackge-dev.rpm" and run rpm -ivh on it.

hope this helps.

I've looked around the projects page on sourceforge and I haven't seen any dev packages.

The install documentation leaves a little to be desired. Basically, it says "type ./configure, make, make install, have a nice day". I emailed the author, so we'll see if he can help me out. In the meantime, any other advice would be appreciated!

Thanks

very interesting problem

The README/INSTALL docs on tarballs tend to be very generic...

Do you have "openbabel.pc" anywhere on your machine? The typical place to look at is /usr/lib/pkgconfig, but it can be /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig or somewhere else. Once you've found it, set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH variable as follows (which you may already know how to do):
Re-run ./configure.

Mine was using /usr/bin/pkgconfig just as an example.