Re: [Mingw-cross-env-list] Proposal: Cflags.private entry for pkg-config

[René Berber]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 Volker Grabsch wrote:

> FYI: I just filed a feature request for Cflags.private in
> pkg-config. Maybe this will simplify things for us in the
> future:
>
> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47996
>
> Anyone interested in implementing that?

Since there is a --static option and corresponding Static spec for the 
.pc file, it follows...

Two points:

1) Why is Static not being used for this?

Other than the obvious reason that nobody else seems to use it.

2) Wouldn't this be useless in real practice (i.e. using those libraries)?

i.e. paraphrasing the definition "private X required by this package but 
not exposed to applications."  I think that the need to define something 
to create static libraries doesn't stop there, the same definition is 
needed when linking those static libraries to something else.

Perhaps the word 'useless' is a bit hard, but many of the problem 
reports we see in this list stem from the need to use those flags, and 
that the flags are not easy to find.

My own recent experience: I'm thinking of sending c-ares.mk to this 
project, but to use it (other than in curl which already knows how to 
use it) the .pc file needs to be patched because there is no Static spec 
on the original, and for static linking its useless w/o the 
-DCARES_STATICLIB, and to find that little tidbit you have to look into 
ares.h since its not documented anywhere else.
--
René Berber