PNG backend error while installing cairo-1.6.0

[venki251]

Hey,

I'm basically new to linux and I want to install GTK+. I see there are also numerous dependencies, which i've been slowly tackling, and the Cairo package has been particularly difficult. It claims the following upon ./configure --prefix=/usr

configure: WARNING: Could not find libpng in the pkg-config search path
checking whether cairo's PNG backend could be enabled... no
configure: error: requested PNG backend could not be enabled

I've done some searching and found that libpng.pc is in my /usr/lib/pkgconfig/ directory and that the following commands don't do the trick:

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH

Granted these may not be at all related to this problem, but I've been searching the net for a while now and can't seem to find out what's wrong. Any ideas?

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in Advance

[Rubberman]

What version of RedHat/Fedora are you running? For RHEL 5, the current version of Cairo is 1.2.4, so I have to assume you are either running a version of Fedora (not RHEL), or you are trying to install cairo-1.6.0 on RHEL. For RHEL 5, the current version of GTK+ is 1.2.10. Which versions does Cairo-1.6.0 require?

In any case, you are obviously running into "dependency version hell". Sometimes you can overcome that by installing the dependent (but incompatible with your existing system tools) in an alternate location and adjusting your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PATH variables as necessary to run the new application, but sometimes it is just WAAAAY too much trouble to accomplish. That is where a virtual machine running the latest (or compatible) OS to deal with the application in question, is called for.