#1358 ./configure --with-ssl should fail when SSL doesn't work

[Xiong Chiamiov]

[$]> ./configure --with-ssl=/usr/local/ssl
[snip]
checking for CRYPTO_lock in -lcrypto... no
checking for CRYPTO_add_lock in -lcrypto... no
checking for ssl_version in -laxtls... no
configure: WARNING: SSL disabled, you will not be able to use HTTPS, FTPS, NTLM and more.
configure: WARNING: Use --with-ssl, --with-gnutls, --with-polarssl, --with-cyassl, --with-nss, --with-axtls, --with-winssl, or --with-darwinssl to address this.
[snip]

When explicitly enabling SSL support, I expect a failure to appropriately find/link to/otherwise work with the SSL libraries to exit the script with a non-zero exit code. Unfortunately, this is not the case; the process continues and exits successfully, which means Bash's -e doesn't catch it and I only come across errors much later in our server provisioning (that I have to trace back).

Latest version of curl, 7.36.0.

[Daniel Stenberg]

Thanks for your report!

Yes, I agree it works exactly like that and I would agree it is the wrong behavior. I don't consider it a very high prio problem though...

[Daniel Stenberg]

I've given this issue some thoughts and I've now decided that since this is the way our configure script has worked for 15+ years and it has not been a problem before, I think it can continue working like this.

It basically means the configure script will consider the options as recommendations and advice but that it will prefer to find a working setup rather than erroring out.

If anyone who reads this objects to this, the right way to do something about the situation is to bring the subject to the mailing list and argue for why it should be changed. Case closed.