Re: [bug-libunistring] pkg-config support, please

[Tim Ruehsen]

On Thursday 22 January 2015 23:52:14 Daiki Ueno wrote:
> Tim Ruehsen <address@hidden> writes:
> > Despite the criticisms, you simply give project maintainers an *option* to
> > use pkg-config. When you add the patch, nothing changes to existing
> > projects. And project maintainers who use libunistring can simply decide
> > if they want to use pkg-config or not.
> > Nothing changes for project libunistring maintainers. See it as an
> > extended
> > service for people who use libunistring.
> 
> I know, but it is also a library's choice to encourage a standard way to
> detect the library by NOT supporting other ways.
> 
> As a new maintainer recently inherited the project, I'd like to follow
> the existing direction if any (in this case, what Bruno would say).
> 
> In other context, he pointed that pkg-config is not very good at
> cross-compiling:
> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gettext.git/tree/gnulib-local/m4/libxml.m4#
> n36 and it still seems to be the case.  One would need to maintain a
> separate pkg-config database per target platform.

Many projects have template files for different target platforms.
So what is the point ?
If you don't want to have these, just turn pkg-config off for your special 
case.

> > We introduced pkg-config to Wget a while ago because distribution
> > maintainers asked for it. They said, it would make their life much
> > easier.
> 
> But it could make other developers' life difficult.  As Werner says,
> pkg-config is not standardized and it is not available in some cases,
> even though it is de-facto.

Please don't try to tell other people what is good for them and what not.
Werner is absolutely wrong with this point.
(Tomorrow, Werner tries to tell me what I should eat and what not, brrrr.)

If pkg-config is not available, your fallback comes into play (in 
configure.ac). 

> >> By the way, for your use-case, perhaps libunistring.m4 in Gnulib might
> >> help.  It looks self-contained and you could just copy it into the m4
> >> directory and call gl_LIBUNISTRING from configure.ac:
> >> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/tree/m4/libunistring.m4
> > 
> > Thank you to point this out.
> > Of course I would like to offer a consistent way to change library and
> > include paths for all libraries that my project uses. How can I explain
> > that changing these for libunistring is completely different than for
> > other libraries (that support pkg-config) ?
> 
> There are several other libraries which choose that way:
> 
>   $ grep AM_ /usr/share/aclocal/*.m4 | grep DEFUN
> 
> and I think it's sometimes more flexible than pkg-config, like this
> case.

Again, pkg-config is meant as an *option*. Nobody is forced to use it, just 
because you provide a *.pc file.

But thank you for thinking about it.
I am out.

Tim