The 'bistromathic' example uses readline. Due to the variations in which it can be installed on the system, this causes build failured during "make check" on several platforms.
Code like # You probably need to customize this for your own environment. CPPFLAGS = -I/opt/local/include LDFLAGS = -L/opt/local/lib is not flying for examples that are part of "make check". 1) On FreeBSD 12.0 ------------------ CC examples/c/bistromathic/bistromathic-parse.o examples/c/bistromathic/parse.c:75:12: fatal error: 'readline/readline.h' file not found #include <readline/readline.h> ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1 error generated. *** Error code 1 On this machine, <readline/readline.h> and libreadline.so are installed in /usr/local. But this is apparently not in the compiler's default search path. 2) On NetBSD 9.0 ---------------- CC examples/c/bistromathic/bistromathic-parse.o CCLD examples/c/bistromathic/bistromathic ld: cannot find -lreadline *** Error code 1 On this machine, <readline/readline.h> is installed in /usr/include, but there is no libreadline.* anywhere. 3) On Solaris 11.4 ------------------ CC examples/c/bistromathic/bistromathic-parse.o CCLD examples/c/bistromathic/bistromathic Undefined first referenced symbol in file tgoto /usr/lib/amd64/libreadline.so tputs /usr/lib/amd64/libreadline.so tgetent /usr/lib/amd64/libreadline.so tgetnum /usr/lib/amd64/libreadline.so tgetstr /usr/lib/amd64/libreadline.so tgetflag /usr/lib/amd64/libreadline.so ld: fatal: symbol referencing errors collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status gmake[3]: *** [Makefile:3961: examples/c/bistromathic/bistromathic] Error 1 On this machine, <readline/readline.h> and libreadline.so are installed in /usr. 'ldd /usr/lib/amd64/libreadline.so' shows libc as the only dependency. But the library also needs the symbols 'tgoto' etc., which are defined in libcurses.so (and this library is also visible under the symlinks libncurses.so, libtermcap.so, libtermlib.so). Conclusion ---------- An autoconf test is really needed. Ideally it will look for the include file and library, based on an option --with-readline-prefix=DIR. You find some code to this effect - in gnulib/m4/readline.m4 - in bash: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=bash.git;a=blob_plain;f=aclocal.m4;hb=HEAD - in clisp: https://gitlab.com/gnu-clisp/clisp/-/blob/master/src/m4/readline.m4 https://gitlab.com/gnu-clisp/clisp/-/blob/master/src/m4/termcap.m4 Bruno