configure: looking for strcasecmp in -lresolve (sic)

[Irfy]

The following code is located immediately after searching for gethostbyname in configure.ac:

dnl resolve lib?
AC_CHECK_FUNC(strcasecmp, , [ AC_CHECK_LIB(resolve, strcasecmp) ])

if test "$ac_cv_lib_resolve_strcasecmp" = "$ac_cv_func_strcasecmp"; then
  AC_CHECK_LIB(resolve, strcasecmp,
              [LIBS="-lresolve $LIBS"],
               ,
               -lnsl)
fi
ac_cv_func_strcasecmp="no"

There are several issues with this code:

• I do not know of any library named libresolve, only libresolv
• I have never seen strcasecmp being searched for in a networking library
• If the first AC_CHECK_LIB succeeds, -lresolve is never added to LIBS which makes no sense
• Blindly setting the cache variable to "no" in the end is likely to wreak havoc in projects relying on the cache

I have the feeling this is some really old, untested code that was never executed, simply because AC_CHECK_FUNC re-used the cached variable ac_cv_func_strcasecmp which is set earlier, in a call to CURL_CHECK_FUNC_STRCASECMP, and which is highly likely to be "yes". (I originally confused the location of CURL_CHECK_FUNC_STRCASECMP relative to this piece of code)

When this variable is "no" AC_CHECK_FUNC fails, assuming the library name is a typo, AC_CHECK_LIB will never succeed and nothing will happen. When AC_CHECK_FUNC succeeds, the rest is never executed and nothing will happen.

The code seems to be from 1999/2000, which fits with the existence of the library libresolv.

I have the feeling, the author meant to look for gethostbyname in libresolv, as this function is searched in multiple libraries right before this piece of code.

If I'm wrong about any of this, I beg for a reference to libresolve and for an explanation about looking for strcasecmp there.

If I'm right about this, I would gladly rewrite the code to look for gethostbyname (seems to have been in libresolv in 1997)

[bagder]

strncasecmp was provided by libresolv (without a trailing 'e') for sunos, and that's even still documented

I think that configure check worked at some point but the wrong lib name makes it seem unlikely to work at all like this.

I think we can just remove that check now.

[Irfy]

Should I piggyback a commit removing this code to #766?

[bagder]

I just pushed this change individually to master in commit fb823d2

[bagder]

Thanks!