[Image-SIG] PIL's configure bug -- from 2002

[Terry Hancock]

This is extremely frustrating:

Since before 2002, when I first reported the problem and
provided a diff to indicate the necessary change

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/image-sig/2002-February/001745.html

PIL's installation has had a fundamental flaw, which 
remains to this day:

While PIL itself honors the --prefix option to "configure", 
it does not honor this option for its dependencies -- 
libjpeg, libpng, and libz.  If they were installed using 
--prefix, PIL will not install correctly, and it cannot 
read JPG or PNG files, which are probably its most 
frequently used image types.

I have struggled with this problem through virtually every 
PIL install I have had to do, as the libjpeg, libpng, and 
libz libraries are RARELY installed in /usr/local as the 
Makefile presumes.

It used to be possible to work-around this flaw by editing 
the makefiles, and following the

make -f Makefile.pre.in boot

instructions.  However, with the introduction of Python 2.3,
this no longer works:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/image-sig/2003-December/002530.html

Now, I'm not very familiar with Gnu Autoconf, but I *would* 
try to fix this bug and send you a diff -- *but* the 
"configure.in" file is missing.  It seems I would need to 
provide a diff for that in the process. And particularly to 
figure out how to set and use the variables to use in the 
Makefile.

If I wanted to provide a permanent fix for this, how could 
I do that?

Thank you,
Terry


--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com