xemacs configuration problem with --prefix and --site-includes

I am not the sysadmin here, and so I'm basically installing my own private version of XEmacs. I've also installed copies of various libraries. I have - binary files in /scratch/palmieri/bin - library files in /scratch/palmieri/lib - include files in /scratch/palmieri/include But the command ./configure --prefix=/scratch/palmieri isn't good enough; I need to give the command ./configure --prefix=/scratch/palmieri --site-includes=/scratch/palmieri/include Why is this? As an example, there is a file called /scratch/palmieri/include/png.h, but without the --site-includes argument, config.log says configure:7891: checking for png.h configure:7899: gcc -E -I/usr/dt/include conftest.c >/dev/null 2>conftest.out configure:7895: png.h: No such file or directory -- John H. Palmieri Dept of Mathematics, Box 354350 palmieri(a)math.washington.edu University of Washington http://www.math.washington.edu/~palmieri Seattle, WA 98195-4350