configure: error: cannot find macro directory `m4'

libxml2 is currently shipping with a bug in it's default source distribution. At build time you will find that the ./configure script will fail with the following message:

configure: error: cannot find macro directory `m4'

This is easily solved by creating the necessary directory under the source root - something like:

chris@osx-lx-vm:/usr/src/libxml2-2.7.7$ sudo mkdir m4

Then you can re-run and configure will complete, ready for you to compile the library.

chris@osx-lx-vm:/usr/src/libxml2-2.7.7$ sudo ./configure && make && make install

christo