Re: [PATCH] Re: configure: use AC_SEARCH_LIBS instead of AC_CHECK_LIB

> The autoconf documentation does not give much confidence either way:
> 
> 	AC_CHECK_LIB requires some care in usage, and should be avoided in
> 	some common cases.
> 
> It is unclear what these "some" are, and is sufficiently unclear for us to
> decide if our situation falls into these "some common cases."  The only
> problem it cites is that alternative libraries may contain a variant
> implementation of the same function found in a more common library, in
> which case you may not want to use such an alternative implementation, and
> I do not think "basename() in -lgen" falls into that category.

> If autoconf people say AC_SEARCH_LIBS() should be preferred over
> AC_CHECK_LIB(), it probably is the right thing to do.  But I want to have
> a warmer-and-fuzzier feeling that we understand why it went wrong, rather
> than blindly doing what the documentation says because the documentation
> tells us to.