I recently took the plunge and compiled my own apache2 for my Ubuntu (9.10) server. I ran configure with -n and was looking over the output to try to learn a bit about what's happening. I noticed at one point that configure was checking to see if sqlite3 files were available (they weren't). I was able to locate information that the sqlite dev package contained these files, installed it, and saw configure acknowledge their presence.
This was cool, as I want to use sqllite. But I'm still curious. -What does it mean that configure found these files? Do I say I compiled apache "with sqllite3 support"? if so, -Is that good? Necessary? Presumably I can write scripts all day using sqllite *without* doing the above. Do I write my scripts any differently or have I just improved server performance? What if I do my development this way and end up with a production host whose server is not so configured? Not that sqlite is the end all here, it's just an example. I'm just as curious about the python mods.
