[SLUG] configure questions

[Rod Butcher]

Hello sluggers, I'm compiling and installing some software packages.. 
need some advice on confure :-

1. If I want to pick up libs and includes in /usr/local/Gnome2.8.1 
before the normal default (presumable /usr/lib and /usr/include) will 
the following get it right ? - or is there a better way ?  :-
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Gnome2.8.1 
LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/Gnome2.8.1/lib CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/Gnome2.8.1/include

2. Configure is demanding that I have libxml2.6.8 library installed - 
error message is :-
checking for libxml libraries >= 2.6.8... configure: error: Version 
2.6.6 found. You need at least libxml2 2.6.8 for this version of libxslt
whereas I have already compiled and installed package libxml2.6.8 into 
/usr/local/Gnome2.8.1, hence the above library concatenation question. 
Do I need to override this package dependency check ?

I realize a smarter way is to install from Mandrake's rpms.. this is a 
oneoff to acquaint myself with software builds on Linux.
thanks
Rod
-----------------------------------------------------------
Brought to you by a thunderbird, penguin, gnu and a camel
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html