Hi Jim,
> I am ambivalent about pkg-config, and cannot justify
> its use in grep, but will wait until after 2.6 to remove it.
I wasn't asking to remove pkg-config, but only to distribute the complete
source code of aclocal.m4, excluding released versions of Automake. So that
anyone can rebuild aclocal.m4 without gettting trouble if
- he doesn't have pkg-config on his machine, or
- he has another version of pkg-config on his machine, or
- his pkg-config is installed with a different --prefix than autoconf and
automake.
The freedom to change a configure.ac file, supposedly guaranteed by the GPL,
is practically void if a user gets into lots of trouble during the step of
regenerating aclocal.m4 from configure.ac.
But if you want to drop pkg-config, here's how GNU clisp links with pcre:
dnl Search for libpcre and define LIBPCRE, LTLIBPCRE and INCPCRE.
AC_LIB_LINKFLAGS([pcre])
AC_CHECK_HEADERS(pcre.h pcre/pcre.h, break)
if test "$ac_cv_header_pcre_h" = "no" -a "$ac_cv_header_pcre_pcre_h" = "no";
then
AC_MSG_ERROR([cannot find PCRE headers])
fi
AC_LIB_APPENDTOVAR([LIBS], [$LIBPCRE])
AC_SEARCH_LIBS(pcre_compile, pcre)
if test "$ac_cv_search_pcre_compile" = "no"; then
AC_MSG_ERROR([cannot find PCRE library])
fi
One can certainly improve on that (restore LIBS afterwards, avoid AC_MSG_ERROR
etc.). Just an idea.
Bruno
