Compiling on Ubuntu 18.04

[Ataraxxia]

Not really an issue but a thing worth having here:

When configuring on Ubuntu 18.04 there is an error about readline library.

checking for READLINE... no
configure: error: libreadline is required

It is caused by a lack of a proper definition file so that ./configure can properly recognize the lib.

It can be fixed by creating file /usr/share/pkgconfig/readline.pc containing:

Name: Readline
Description: Gnu Readline library for command line editing
URL: http://tiswww.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html
Version: 7.0
Requires.private: tinfo
Libs: -lreadline
Cflags: -I/usr/include/readline

Source: https://www.marache.net/post/readline-pc.html

[nhorman]

Please dont go suggesting that solution, it's wrong. A proper solution is to go check out the readline git tree from gnu, build and install it. Its had the readline pkg-config file checked in since 2015. Better still, open a bug on launchpad telling the ubuntu maintainers to do that. Theres really no excuse for them to be almost 6 years behind on package updates like this