Re: [autoconf] Re: pkg-config wisdom

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Fri, 23 Oct 2009, address@hidden wrote:
> The most popular scenario I think is: the pkg-config
> itself is bundled to the system (/usr/bin/pkg-config etc)
> but the users install their own libraries to non-system
> directory (e.g. /usr/local/xxx), and the users slipped
> to set PKG_CONFIG_PATH manually.

There is also a problem when an updated version of just one library is 
installed under a different path but an older version of this library 
is located elsewhere and refered by some other package's 
configuration.  Configure scripts which trust pkg-config include and 
library paths and simpy concatenate them together (often in some 
random order) cause big problems for users since the user has no 
control over the paths used.

I have found this to be a nightmare under Solaris 10 which has an 
older Gnome environment, but some packages want to link with newer 
libraries and don't need all of Gnome.  The only workaround has been 
to temporarily rename system files.

This is not to say that pkg-config doesn't work well; it is just best 
for a carefully built and well integrated environment rather than one 
incrementally put together over time.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/