gnome-libs and libz

[chris harrison <gnome lowfield co uk>]

Greetings all,
  
I'm trying to compile gnome-libs locally (ie. not as root).
The trouble is that
  ./configure --prefix=$HOME/lib
  
throws an error
  
checking for grantpt in -lpt... no
checking for inflate in -lz... no
checking for compress in -lz... no
configure: error:
*** Incorrect libz version found.  Please make sure you do not have
*** an outdated libz.a or libz.so hiding in your X11 distribution or
*** elsewhere on your system.  Versions of libz with the compress and
*** uncompress symbols are sufficiently recent to build GNOME.

 
This, despite libz 1.1.3 having been installed locally (underneath
$HOME/lib).

I've been generally tinkering to no effect - there is another
libz around, in /usr/lib, but that's 1.1.3 too! If there are
other versions of libz.a and/or libz.so around I can't
delete them - I'm presuming that I can get configure to
look at the libs in a different order?

If the versions are sufficiently recent, as the error message says,
how can I build gnome-libs anyway?

Any hints?

Thanks.


-- 
chris harrison
http://www.lowfield.co.uk/