Re: TODO

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
> My main complaint about pkg-config is this:  It is supposed to
> make it easier to link with packages that have each been installed
> to their own prefix (to support parallel installation of multiple
> versions), but in fact it makes things much harder.
>
> Real world example:  I want to link against libgdiplus, which has a
> dependency on cairo, so I ask it for the linkflags:
>
> $ pkg-config --libs libgdiplus
> Package libgdiplus was not found in the pkg-config search path.
> Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libgdiplus.pc'
> to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
> No package 'libgdiplus' found
>
> Fair enough, better tell it where libgdiplus lives:
>
> $ PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/libgdiplus10/lib/pkgconfig

You seem to be a victim of a package install where every package has 
used its own unique installation prefix.  It seems to me that most 
systems use just one or two installation prefixes.

The system I use (Solaris based) uses three.  There is one for the 
software that comes with the base system (under /usr)), one for 
"freeware" (under /usr/sfw), and one created by myself for locally 
installed packages (under /usr/local).

The Gentoo Linux system I use has only two pkgconfig files.

Libtool helps, but its resulting configuration (saved in .la files) is 
static, while pkgconfig's configuration is dynamic since it may be 
altered by the user.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen