Thread: Errors in explanation of the --with-libxml configure option.

The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:

Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/install-procedure.html
Description:

Online doc states

        [...], or set the variables XML2_CFLAGS and XML2_LIBS. (If
pkg-config is installed, then to override its idea of where libxml2 is you
must either set XML2_CONFIG or set both XML2_CFLAGS and XML2_LIBS to
nonempty strings.)

But neither XML2_CFLAGS nor XML2_LIBS appears in the actual configure
scripts or makefiles, and so of course setting those env vars does no good.
The INSTALL text file bundled in postgresql-12.1.tar.bz2 states instead

        [...] , you can either set the environment variable XML2_CONFIG to
point to the "xml2-config" program belonging to the installation, or use the
options "--with-includes" and "--with-libraries".

Now *that* advice is correct, and following it leads to success.  Therefore
suggest sync that part of online doc to corresponding part of INSTALL
offline doc.

Thank you.

> On 7 Oct 2020, at 02:43, PG Doc comments form <noreply@postgresql.org> wrote:

> But neither XML2_CFLAGS nor XML2_LIBS appears in the actual configure
> scripts or makefiles, and so of course setting those env vars does no good.
> The INSTALL text file bundled in postgresql-12.1.tar.bz2 states instead

The documentation on the website is always for the latest minor release (which
is 12.4 in this case), and the XML2_CFLAGS and XML2_LIBS variables were
introduced in 12.3.  If you download the latest minor release instead it should
just work.

The INSTALL file in the archive you downloaded is correctly describing how to
set up libxml for that particular version.

cheers ./daniel