Lately, I have been trying to install the pecl memcache PHP extension on OSX Catalina with brew memcached installed and I'm getting the following error every time I try the install process:

configure: error: memcache support requires ZLIB. Use --with-zlib-dir=<DIR> to specify prefix where ZLIB include and library are located

I have tried with pecl install memcache and with pecl install --configureoptions='with-zlib-dir="path"' memcache to no avail. It always gets the same point and it fails.

From what I have reviewed on different topics regarding the installation of the package the issue seems to be with the -D option in the pecl install command, because when I do a manual install from the source code passing the argument --with-zlib-dir=/usr/local/Cellar/zlib/1.2.11 to the ./configure command it works like a charm and installs the package but is now not listed in pecl list installed packages and as so it cannot be uninstalled.

The issue is I need pecl to manage the installation of the package to be able to uninstall it any time when the environment changes from project to protect.