Re: PKG_CHECK_MODULES not working in Solaris

[Eric Blake]

On 07/20/2011 02:39 AM, Kaushik BV wrote:
> But somehow it fails in `Solaris` with the following error
>
>      checking if libxml2 is present... ./configure: line 11586: syntax error
> near unexpected token `LIBXML2,'
>      ./configure: line 11586: `PKG_CHECK_MODULES(LIBXML2, libxml-2.0>=
> 2.6.19,'

That means that your aclocal.m4 (either hand-written, or as generated by 
'aclocal' from automake) file did not include enough instructions to 
have a definition of the macro PKG_CHECK_MODULES.  Is your project using 
automake?  If so, it means that you were probably relying on automake's 
search path of installed public .m4 files on one machine where the 
pkg-config package had been installed, but on your Solaris machine, 
automake is not set up to find that external macro by default.

Relying on external .m4 macros when rerunning aclocal (or autoreconf) is 
always dangerous - it means you are dependent on what else is already 
installed on your machine.  Better is to copy the pkg-config .m4 file 
that defined PKG_CHECK_MODULES into your project, so that the macro is 
available for all people who autoreconf your package, even in cases like 
your Solaris setup where pkg-config has not already been installed in 
such a way that its public .m4 files are visible to automake.

> Googled for a solution, most of them complain of `pkg-config` not being
> installed. But in my test machine its actually installed, checked it by
> executing the following command.
>
>      bash-3.00# pkg-config libxml-2.0 --modversion
>      2.6.23

That says that the pkg-config binary is installed, but doesn't say 
whether the public .m4 files provided by the pkg-config package are 
located somewhere that automake will find them by default.

--
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org