Libevent missing when building tmux, while it is there

Question

I am trying to build tmux locally (no root, so no yum install possible). On Centos7 I cannot build it...

~/build/tmux-2.3$ ./configure --prefix=/home/statquant/programs/
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /usr/bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... gawk
[...]
checking for library containing clock_gettime... none required
checking for LIBEVENT... no
checking for library containing event_init... no
checking event.h usability... no
checking event.h presence... no
checking for event.h... no
configure: error: "libevent not found"

yum tells me I have libevent

statquant@nyzls900t:~/build$ yum list libevent
Installed Packages
libevent.x86_64

If I try to locate it it is fine:

statquant@nyzls900t:~/build/tmux-2.3$ ll /usr/lib64/libevent*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     21 Dec  2 09:04 /usr/lib64/libevent-2.0.so.5 -> libevent-2.0.so.5.1.9*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 297792 Jun 13  2014 /usr/lib64/libevent-2.0.so.5.1.9*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     26 Dec  2 09:04 /usr/lib64/libevent_core-2.0.so.5 -> libevent_core-2.0.so.5.1.9*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 179800 Jun 13  2014 /usr/lib64/libevent_core-2.0.so.5.1.9*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     27 Dec  2 09:04 /usr/lib64/libevent_extra-2.0.so.5 -> libevent_extra-2.0.so.5.1.9*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 133864 Jun 13  2014 /usr/lib64/libevent_extra-2.0.so.5.1.9*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     29 Dec  2 09:04 /usr/lib64/libevent_openssl-2.0.so.5 -> libevent_openssl-2.0.so.5.1.9*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  24456 Jun 13  2014 /usr/lib64/libevent_openssl-2.0.so.5.1.9*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     30 Dec  2 09:04 /usr/lib64/libevent_pthreads-2.0.so.5 -> libevent_pthreads-2.0.so.5.1.9*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  11200 Jun 13  2014 /usr/lib64/libevent_pthreads-2.0.so.5.1.9*

Finally I have it it my LD_LIB

statquant@nyzls900t:~/build/tmux-2.3$ echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
/usr/lib64:/usr/lib

Answer 1

You will need not just libevent but also the libevent-devel rpm installed so you have the necessary files for building against the library.

If you can't get that installed systemwide, the easiest thing is going to be to also build libevent into your personal environment in your home directory.