[MacPorts] #23312: Unable to detect PHP version

[Ryan Schmidt]

John reported:

>> checking PHP version... Unknown option: n
>> Usage: head [-options] <url>...
>>     -m <method>   use method for the request (default is 'HEAD')
>>     -f            make request even if head believes method 
>> is illegal
>>     -b <base>     Use the specified URL as base
>>     -t <timeout>  Set timeout value
>>     -i <time>     Set the If-Modified-Since header on the request
>>     -c <conttype> use this content-type for POST, PUT, CHECKIN
>>     -a            Use text mode for content I/O
>>     -p <proxyurl> use this as a proxy
>>     -P            don't load proxy settings from environment
>>     -H <header>   send this HTTP header (you can specify several)
>> 
>>     -u            Display method and URL before any response
>>     -U            Display request headers (implies -u)
>>     -s            Display response status code
>>     -S            Display response status chain
>>     -e            Display response headers
>>     -d            Do not display content
>>     -o <format>   Process HTML content in various ways
>> 
>>     -v            Show program version
>>     -h            Print this message
>> 
>>     -x            Extra debugging output
>> configure: error: failed to detect PHP version, please report
>> 

Ryan replied:

>> You have installed [http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?LWP 
>> libwww-perl] with
>> its helper "HEAD" program, which has replaced your OS's 
>> unrelated "head"
>> program because Mac OS X's filesystem is case-insensitive. 
>> Please restore
>> the proper "head" program into your /usr/bin from your 
>> backups or from
>> another machine with the same OS version, or reinstall Mac 
>> OS X to get it
>> back. To avoid this, don't install libwww-perl with its 
>> "helper" scripts.
>> If you install p5-libwww-perl using MacPorts, it will not 
>> include these
>> helper scripts so you will not have this problem.
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010603142727786
>> &query=perl+HEAD

John responded:

> I finally got around to trying this. /usr/bin does not contain "HEAD", it
> contains only "head". This head is dated August 22, 2005 like all the other
> versions of head on all my other Macs that have Tiger installed. Running a
> binary comparison to head from a Mac that never had LWP installed shows them
> to be identical files. 
> 
> I now get the "Unable to detect PHP version" error on two G4 servers that
> have Tiger installed. What else could be causing the error?

The error you reported sure looks like the usage message that LWP's HEAD program prints, so you definitely have it installed and it's definitely interfering with your php5-oracle build. If LWP's HEAD is not in /usr/bin, it is somewhere else on your disk that the configure script is finding it. Check every part of binpath as set in your macports.conf, e.g. check /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /opt/local/bin, /opt/local/sbin, and if that doesn't work, use locate or find. It's there somewhere.