Apache Httpd Build from source: fatal error: expat.h: No such file or directory

Asked 29/1, 2019 at 2:4 Answered 21/7, 2022 at 6:22

I am trying to build Apache Server v 2.4.38 on RHEL 7.3 and I am using apr 1.6.5, apr-util 1.6.1, and pcre 8.42.

I am running following commands

./configure  --with-included-apr --with-pcre=/data/abc/installed/pcre_installed --prefix=/data/abc/installed/httpd_installed  

make

While running 'make' I am receiving error

/bin/sh /data/abc/installed/httpd-2.4.38/srclib/apr/libtool --silent --mode=compile gcc -g -O2 -pthread   -DHAVE_CONFIG_H  -DLINUX -D_REENTRANT -D_GNU_SOURCE   -I/data/abc/installed/httpd-2.4.38/srclib/apr-util/include -I/data/abc/installed/httpd-2.4.38/srclib/apr-util/include/private  -I/data/abc/installed/httpd-2.4.38/srclib/apr/include    -o xml/apr_xml.lo -c xml/apr_xml.c && touch xml/apr_xml.lo
xml/apr_xml.c:35:19: fatal error: expat.h: No such file or directory
 #include <expat.h>

Monarchal answered 29/1, 2019 at 2:4 Comment(4)

I cannot do 'yum install expat-devel' because it needs sudo access. – Monarchal 29/1, 2019 at 2:11

Why are you building Apache from source if you don't have root access?! – Loggins 29/1, 2019 at 2:14

I want to start httpd server in my machine. Is it possible to install Apache Httpd with rpm package without having root access? – Monarchal 29/1, 2019 at 2:19

You cannot make it listen on port 80 unless you have root access, so, you'd only be able to make it work on a port like 8080 (usually, ports below 1024 are reserved). – Loggins 29/1, 2019 at 7:24

Download expat-2.2.6.tar.bz2 from https://libexpat.github.io/.

Extract expat using following command

tar xvjf expat-2.2.6.tar.bz2 -C /path-to-dir

Change to the extracted expat directory.

Build expat using following commands

./configure --prefix=/path-to-expat-installation-dir
make
make install

While building Apache Httpd from source specify --with-expat

./configure --with-included-apr --prefix=/path-to-apache-installation --with-expat=/path-to-expat-installation-dir

Monarchal answered 29/1, 2019 at 3:21 Comment(0)

For anyone else coming across this:

OP had to do this because they didn't have sudo access. If you do, usually you don't need to download the source of expat manually; installing via package manager is way easier. Unless the software you are compiling requires a newer version of expat than your RPM repos provide.

So for the RHEL family of OSes you can just do sudo <dnf|yum> install expat expat-devel, then proceed with what you were compiling.

Healing answered 26/6, 2021 at 13:36 Comment(2)

And for Debian/Ubuntu family: apt install libexpat1-dev – Assurance 22/6, 2022 at 13:50

On SLES the package name is libexpat-devel - so I had to install it as "sudo zypper install libexpat-devel" - however that library seems to beget the error described in #43862622 – Cardwell 19/1, 2023 at 7:6

Do you have the expat library installed? (Because that's where the expat.h comes from.)

https://libexpat.github.io/

If you cannot install it globally to the system, I'm sure Apache's ./configure script must have an option to support a custom location for the library as well.

Loggins answered 29/1, 2019 at 2:13 Comment(2)

Is there a parameter to specify expat library path in ./configure? – Monarchal 29/1, 2019 at 2:23

Try ./configure --help | fgrep expat?! – Loggins 29/1, 2019 at 7:18

Tried In Ubuntu
apt install libexpat1-dev
For RHEL, I would suggest @cyqsimon's answer

Euell answered 21/7, 2022 at 6:22 Comment(1)

libexpat1-dev fix my problem on debian – Scandian 20/7, 2023 at 15:36

For anyone else coming across this:

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