Are you suggesting that as a change for docs/INSTALL ?

Personally I tend to just set LD_LIBRARY_PATH if this is more of a temporary thing/work-around.

Not really a change - I suggest a note in how to install curl and libcurl.

There is the LDFLAGS note but this is not enough. When the openssl libraries are somewhere else which is not set in /etc/ld.so.conf then configure script fails.

Honestly, for me it doesn't matter, if you prefer LD_LIBRARY_PATH then it is of course also OK. I personally like the rpath linker option because in this case I don't depend on any external settings - the path is hard-coded into the executable.

Notice:
From the above mentioned page:
If you have shared SSL libs installed in a directory where your run-time linker doesn't find them (which usually causes configure failures), you can provide the -R option to ld on some operating systems to set a hard-coded path to the run-time linker:

LDFLAGS=-R/usr/local/ssl/lib ./configure --with-ssl

This doesn't work for gcc 7.3.0. This is the output in config.log:

gcc: error: unrecognized command line option '-R'

This works:

LDFLAGS=-Wl,-R/usr/local/ssl/lib ./configure --with-ssl

Adding -Wl, doesn't break it. How ever, a small modification in the installation guide would help...

When the openssl libraries are somewhere else which is not set in /etc/ld.so.conf then configure script fails

No it doesn't. If it does, that's a bug! The configure script sets and uses LD_LIBRARY_PATH specifically to deal with this.

I would be very happy if you would provide your suggested phrasing as actual diffs to the source file. Also note that you're talking about linker options to a specific linker so any docs would need to clarify that this is system/linker specific. And as you say, possibly even version specific.

Wait, it must be a new bug because I tried it with curl 7.58 and there it works! So check the changes from 7.58 to 7.60! Thank you for mentioning it because I almost forgot. I had to solve it so I was working on it last weekend until I found the solution with the rpath linker option.

This is the command line:

./configure --prefix=/FaF/curl --with-ssl=/FaF/openssl --disable-ldap --without-zlib --disable-proxy --disable-ipv6 --disable-manual

With 7.58 it works without any additional LDFLAGS setting, with 7.60 it fails.

Yes, #2586 for example is a fix since 7.60.0 and is directly related to this. So please try a daily snapshot first.

Yep, I confirm, the latest daily snapshot works! I will check out periodically if a new version is available.

So, there would be more or less only the hint in the installation guide regarding the rpath linker option or preceding LDFLAGS with -Wl, so it works for gcc.

Thanks for confirming. The next release date is planned for July 11th.

Thanks @AlBundyLoves69, the updated description has now landed!