Comment 3 for bug 977571

As I said, try --with-ssl=/usr. You could say that should be default, but it doesn't seem a safe change in a stable (5.3) release.

5.5 is built differently (mariadb or mysql both). I think it does not export SSL symbols from the libmysqlclient.so, as you suggest to do. You could try mariadb 5.5.23.

I sympatise with your statement "allowing the ./configure script to best figure out ..." - unfortunately it is not tradition in the MySQL development to focus on good defaults for people compiling themselves.