Error installing PCRE

Question

I'm trying to install PCRE on my Ubuntu 11.10 Server. When I run the "make" command, I get a really long output which always ends in this error:

libtool: link: ( cd ".libs" && rm -f "libpcreposix.la" && ln -s "../libpcreposix.la" "libpcreposix.la" ) source='pcrecpp.cc' object='pcrecpp.lo' libtool=yes \
        DEPDIR=.deps depmode=none /bin/bash ./depcomp \
        /bin/bash ./libtool --tag=CXX   --mode=compile  -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I.      -c -o pcrecpp.lo pcrecpp.cc libtool: compile: unrecognized option `-DHAVE_CONFIG_H' libtool: compile: Try `libtool
--help' for more information. make[1]: *** [pcrecpp.lo] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/root/src/pcre/pcre-8.12' make:
*** [all] Error 2

I did run "configure". Any ideas?

Answer 1

You need a C++ compiler installed, you'll most likely want g++.

With apt-get, run 'apt-get install g++', or 'apt-get install build-essential', since build-essential includes g++.

Answer 2

PCRE tries to build c++ output without having a c++ compiler. Try

./configure --disable-cpp 

to disable the C++ options.

Answer 3

Why not find PCRE using apt-cache search pcre | grep pcre and then use apt-get install to install PCRE? I think PCRE has been already included in the repository.

This is the result of the above command in my computer (Ubuntu 10.04):

$ apt-cache search pcre | grep pcre
libpcre3-dbg - Perl 5 Compatible Regular Expression Library - debug symbols
libpcre3-dev - Perl 5 Compatible Regular Expression Library - development files
libpcrecpp0 - Perl 5 Compatible Regular Expression Library - C++ runtime files
libpcre3 - Perl 5 Compatible Regular Expression Library - runtime files
cl-ppcre - Portable Regular Express Library for Common Lisp
gambas2-gb-pcre - The Gambas regexp component
haskell-pcre-light-doc - library documentation for pcre-light
libghc6-pcre-light-dev - Haskell library for Perl 5-compatible regular expressions
libghc6-pcre-light-prof - pcre-light library with profiling enabled
liblua5.1-rex-pcre-dev - PCRE development files for the Lua language version 5.1
liblua5.1-rex-pcre0 - Perl regular expressions library for the Lua language version 5.1
libpcre++-dev - C++ wrapper class for pcre (development)
libpcre++0 - C++ wrapper class for pcre (runtime)
libpcre-ocaml - OCaml bindings for PCRE (runtime)
libpcre-ocaml-dev - OCaml bindings for PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression)
pcregrep - grep utility that uses perl 5 compatible regexes.
pike7.6-pcre - PCRE module for Pike
sqlite3-pcre - Perl-compatible regular expression support for SQLite
postfix-pcre - PCRE map support for Postfix

Answer 4

I've had the same problem and the solution was to do everything suggested in the other answers and installing the developement files for PCRE:

1. apt-get install build-essential
2. apt-get install libtool
3. apt-get install libpcre3-dev
4. apt-get install libpcre3

Answer 5

When I run configure I get:

libpcre checking for windows.h... no configure: error: Invalid C++ compiler or C++ compiler flags

Fix was to install g++ as Fredrik mentioned. On CentOS: yum install gcc-c++

Answer 6

To install pcre package, you need to run 2 commands:

1. apt-get install libpcre3 libpcre3-dev
2. apt-get install build-essential libpcre3-dev libxslt1-dev libgd2-xpm-dev libgeoip-dev libssl-dev

Answer 7

I found an answer as to why, but not a cure; (i know this is an old question but I thought I would contribute anyway).

I found pcre was already installed on my system, but apparently libtool was not. When I tried to sudo apt-get install libtool i got

Package libtool is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Don't have much of an idea why this is happening, but working on finding out! Hopes this answers your question.