Libguestfs - May 2021 - Building from source with custom gperf location

Hello,

I'm trying to build/install libguestfs (for virt-edit) on a RHEL7 server,
where I have no root access. I couldn't find any pre-built binaries online,
so have been trying to build from source (downloaded from
https://download.libguestfs.org/). I'm using the latest stable version,
1.44.1.

I have followed the instructions at
https://libguestfs.org/guestfs-building.1.html, but './configure' is
failing with:
checking for gperf... no
configure: error: gperf must be installed

Indeed, it seems gperf is not installed. I then built gperf from source and
symlinked the binary to '~/bin/gperf', which is on my PATH.

The problem is that I can't work out how to get libguestfs's ./configure
script to pick up this manually-compiled copy of gperf (which I don't have
permissions to place in a standard location under /usr/).

Can anyone suggest a solution/workaround?

(There may be a similar problem for some of the other external dependencies
that are checked after gperf - I couldn't see a way to get configure to
continue on failure or equivalent).

Thanks in advance,
Lewis
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On Sat, May 01, 2021 at 02:26:37PM +0100, Lewis Gaul
wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm trying to build/install libguestfs (for virt-edit) on a RHEL7
server, where
> I have no root access. I couldn't find any pre-built binaries online,
so have
> been trying to build from source (downloaded from?https://
> download.libguestfs.org/). I'm using the latest stable version, 1.44.1.
> 
> I have followed the instructions at?https://libguestfs.org/
> guestfs-building.1.html, but './configure' is failing with:
> checking for gperf... no
> configure: error: gperf must be installed
> 
> Indeed, it seems gperf is not installed. I then built gperf from source and
> symlinked the binary to '~/bin/gperf', which is on my PATH.
> 
> The problem is that I can't work out how to get
libguestfs's?./configure script
> to pick up this manually-compiled copy of gperf (which I don't have
permissions
> to place in a standard location under /usr/).
> 
> Can anyone suggest a solution/workaround?
I think you should be able to do:

  ./configure GPERF=$HOME/bin/gperf

If not then try fiddling around with m4/guestfs-progs.m4 to see if you
can come up with a workable patch.

Rich.
> (There may be a similar problem for some of the other external dependencies
> that are checked after gperf - I couldn't see a way to get configure to
> continue on failure or equivalent).
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Lewis
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