I am running OS X 10.13, with gperftools 2.5 installed via Macports (as a dependency for something else), and building with GCC 7 installed via Macports.

The sparsehash ./configure script decides to try and link against tcmalloc, because it sees /opt/local/include/google/malloc_extension.h. But the linker fails to find -ltcmalloc, because it is in /opt/local/lib/libtcmalloc.a and similar, and it is only searching in /opt/local/lib/gcc7/ and not /opt/local/lib.

The configure script needs to make sure that linking actually succeeds before deciding to actually use tcmalloc, or I need a configure script option to override the check and refrain from using tcmalloc even when it is installed.

Is there a suggested workaround for convincing sparsehash to ignore the installed tcmalloc?