Suggestion is to add another page, e. g. "Compilation issues" under:

• Appendixes
  • Installation and setup
    • Compilation issues

that will contain different cases of compilation issues. This one could be called "Library in non-standard location". Here's the proposed contents of the new page:

Compilation issues

Library in non-standard location

Overview

Zabbix allows you to specify a library located in a non-standard location, e. g.:

$ ./configure --enable-server --with-mysql --with-libcurl=/usr/local/bin/curl-config 

In this case Zabbix will run the curl-config from specified location and will use its output to determine the correct libcurl to use.

While this will work if that's the only libcurl installed in your system it might not if you have another libcurl installed in a standard location (e. g. by package manager). Usually it's the case when you need a newer version of the library for Zabbix and the older one for other applications.

Specifying a component in a non-standard location will not always work when the same component exists also in a standard location. For example, you would like to use a newer libcurl installed in /usr/local while you still have libcurl package installed.

It might happen so that Zabbix will "pick up" the wrong one and compilation will fail, e. g.:

usr/bin/ld: ../../src/libs/zbxhttp/libzbxhttp.a(http.o): in function `zbx_http_convert_to_utf8':
/tmp/zabbix-master/src/libs/zbxhttp/http.c:957: undefined reference to `curl_easy_header'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

In this case the function curl_easy_header() is not available in the older /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcurl.so but is available in the newer /usr/local/lib/libcurl.so .

The problem is the order of linker flags and one solution in this case is to specify the full path to the library you want to be used in a LDFLAGS variable, like this:

$ LDFLAGS="-Wl,--no-as-needed /usr/local/lib/libcurl.so" ./configure --enable-server --with-mysql --with-libcurl=/usr/local/bin/curl-config

Note the -Wl,--no-as-needed option, this might be needed on some systems.

See also: default linking options on Debian-based systems.

Documentation updated: 

• Known issues > Compilation issues (5.0, 6.0, 6.4, 7.0) (new page)
• Known issues (5.0, 6.0, 6.4, 7.0) (sentence added at the top)
• Installation > Installation from sources (5.0, 6.0, 6.4, 7.0) (URL updated under See also)