Re: [Pan-users] Pan 0.133 refuses to work any longer

[Rhialto]

On Sat 25 Aug 2012 at 04:30:46 -0500, Mike Brown wrote:
> I have to upgrade from Fedora 14 in order to get a newer pan.  Can't do source
> as the developers have decided that a program should be used to determine if
> what is needed is installed (pkg-config).  But, because not ALL of the needed

I think that the vast majority of software that uses configure scripts
also uses pkgconfig,  these days.

> stuff has those entries, the configure script fails, even though what it wants
> is there.  Pan really needs to drop the use of that program and use the old,
> and proven, method of determining what is on the system, or not.

As I understand it, pkgconfig is used to determine *where* something is
on the system. This rather varies a lot over systems - even between
various Linux distributions, I believe. Not to mention other Unix
systems; I use NetBSD where packages are installed (by default) under
/usr/pkg, but I expect that you can change that and that configure +
pkgconfig should cope with that.

Pkgconfig also supplies the compilation and link options that are
necessary to use some library.  It would be impossible to put all
thinkable combinations of that in a configure script in an attempt to
find out which options to use.

The alternative is "the old-fashioned way" where you supply configure
with tons of options like "--with-foo-library=/usr/lib/foo
--with-foo-includes=/usr/include/foolib".

Not that there is nothing wrong with pkgconfig. My favourite peeve for
instance is that often, if a shared library uses some other shared
library, that dependency is made explicit even when it need not be. That
results in unnecessary update dependencies: when you're updating some
lower level library, you are forced to update more than just those
libraries/programs that actually use it directly.

> MB
-Olaf.
-- 
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert  -- There's no point being grown-up if you 
\X/ rhialto/at/xs4all.nl    -- can't be childish sometimes. -The 4th Doctor