PHP 4.0 Bug #5639: unable to locate imap client library?

From: ora.et.labora@web.de Operating system: redhat 6.2 - intel PHP version: 4.0 Release Candidate 2 PHP Bug Type: Installation problem Bug description: unable to locate imap client library? This is the exact php version I'm goint to report about: "php-4.0.1pl2". Problem: I tried to configure php with support for IMAP but the "./configure" script reported that no imap library could be found -- although I installed "imap-devel-4.7.5.rpm". Discussion: RedHat forgot (?) to put the "lib" prefix in front of the imap client library /usr/lib/c-imap.a -- as part of the rpm packet mentioned above. The configure script is aware of this and tries to solve this by establishing a softlink /usr/lib/libc-client.a to /usr/lib/c-client.a This will only work if we have permission to do so. Because I don't like such scripts to modify my system I'll never run ./configure as "root" -- which the script assumes. The script assumes, that creating the softlink never fails and consequently ignores every possible error - which took me some time to figure out what happend. I suggest that the ./configure script shall instead report the problem and make some hints how the problem can be fixed "manually". I also want to mention again that it is not true that the superuser configures the package nor that the superuser does a "make". All what we can assume is that the superuser does a supervised "make install".