GLib compile error (ffi.h), but libffi is installed

After a succesful configure, make exits with snipped

gclosure.c:29:17: fatal error: ffi.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.

I have libffi installed, and locate ffi.h gives:

/home/luca/gcc4.6/gcc-4.6.0/libffi/include/ffi.h.in
/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/ffi.h
/usr/share/doc/ghc-doc/html/users_guide/ffi.html
/usr/share/doc/libffi5/html/Using-libffi.html

If you have a Debian-based Linux OS with apt-get:

sudo apt-get install libffi-dev

With a Redhat-base OS:

yum install libffi-devel

With Alpine Linux:

apk add libffi-dev

When compling libffi 3.0.9 from source code, the include/Makefile.in installs the includes in the ${PREFIX}/lib/libffi-3.0.9/include directory. I'm sure there's a WONDERFUL reason for that, but I'm annoyed by it.

This line fixes it, when compiling libffi:

/bin/perl -pe 's#^includesdir = .*#includesdir = \@includedir\@#' -i include/Makefile.in

The includes will now be installed in ${PREFIX}/include, which is /usr/local/include for me.

My full recipe is:

cd /var/tmp
rm -rf libffi-3.0.9
untgz /usr/local/src/utils/libffi-3.0.9.tar.gz
cd libffi-3.0.9
/bin/perl -pe 's#^AM_CFLAGS = .*#AM_CFLAGS = -g#' -i Makefile.in
/bin/perl -pe 's#^includesdir = .*#includesdir = \@includedir\@#' -i include/Makefile.in
./configure --prefix=/usr/local \
    --includedir=/usr/local/include
gmake
gmake install

Resolved by manually setting LIBFFI_CFLAGS for location of ffi.h in configure

Check your GCC version and note this entry in the Debian Bug Archive: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=523869

It was the final solution to my particular issue (it looked exactly like what you report, but couldn't be solved with the solution above)... my problem had nothing to do with LIBFFI at all.

An old thread, but anyway...

After putting the required files in a location where they could be found, I got it working:

cp /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/ffi* /usr/local/include/
cp /usr/lib/libffi.so /usr/local/lib/