Hello, TL;DR: If you encounter the 'An appropriate version of serf could not be found' error when running `configure`, *double-check whether `pkg-config` (pkgconf) is installed on your system. *Install it if it isn't already (e.g., `apt-get install pkgconf`). AFAIK, there can be other reasons for this error message, but `pkg-config` is the easiest thing to check first.
I've been playing around with SVN's autoconf-based build system on Ubuntu today, and I had a hard time understanding why `../subversion/configure --with-swig-python=no --with-swig-perl=no *--with-serf*` was erroring out when libserf was clearly installed: [[[ configure: serf library configuration via pkg-config checking was serf enabled... no An appropriate version of serf could not be found, so libsvn_ra_serf will not be built. If you want to build libsvn_ra_serf, please install serf 1.3.4 or newer. configure: error: Serf was explicitly enabled but an appropriate version was not found. ]]] * Changing `--with-serf` to `--with-serf=/usr` helped (thanks for the hint: https://lists.apache.org/thread/jcrhb01z3kgrzshgs2gnl2bxny33z25y), but this is more of a workaround than a solution. I was expecting the script to auto-detect libserf. * Then I noticed that the `configure` output mentions `pkg-config`, which wasn't installed on the system. Installing pkgconf resolved the problem. The output also includes a line "checking for pkg-config... no", so the script is actually aware that `pkg-config` isn't available. Could the libserf check report that it couldn't auto-detect libserf because `pkg-config` is missing? Hope this helps! -- With best regards, Pavel Lyalyakin
