[Freeciv-Dev] configure won't find libpng on MinGW

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, I'm trying to compile Freeciv 1.14.0 stable release on Windows 2000
under MinGW, using the native Windows client.

After not getting anywhere with Cygwin, I realized that Cygwin and MinGW
aren't the same thing, and so I installed the latest greatest
environment from http://www.mingw.org/ .  Then I compiled the latest
greatest zlib 1.1.4 from http://www.gzip.org/zlib/ , and the latest
greatest libpng 1.2.5 from http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html .
I went up a learning curve with the use of the -mno-cygwin flag, I
figure it is only supposed to be used to generate .DLLs, not for
libraries targetted at the UNIX environment.  In other words,
use -mno-cygwin for the native Windows client, but not for component
libraries?

Anyways, I got zlib and libpng built and installed just fine.  The
libpng test and test-config-install work just fine.  My /usr/include
looks just fine:

vanevery@VANGOGH ~/freeciv-1.14.0
$ ls /usr/include
libpng  libpng12  png.h  pngconf.h  zconf.h  zlib.h

However, Freeciv configure will *not* pick up libpng.  configure dies
with the following lines.  What gives?

checking png.h usability... no
checking png.h presence... no
checking for png.h... no
configure: error: "You have to install libpng"


I seem to be using GNU Autoconf 2.56.  The installation instructions say
some vague things about Autoconf 2.13 being preferred.  What are the
known problems here, if any?  Why should they kill a simple check for a
*.h file?  How might they be resolved?

BTW I have done the whole Linux thing once upon a time, and in the early
90's I was an imake / autoconf / m4 guru.  But it has been a long time
and I don't remember any of the specific details.

I do not have GTK installed.  Since I'm trying to build the Windows
native client, in theory I shouldn't need GTK.  Are there any unintended
dependencies between GTK and other stuff?


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

Taking risk where others will not.