On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 10:03:58AM -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
>On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 22:38, David Dawes wrote:
>> On Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 09:06:43PM -0500, Warren Turkal wrote:
>> >David Dawes wrote:
>> >> I think you have your perspective backwards.  Autotools is supposed to
>> >> handle system differences for the software package, not impose
>> >> requirements
>> >> on the underlying system.
>> >
>> >Autotools do not require pkg-config. It just makes autotools significantly
>> >easier to implement in a portable way for libs.
>> >
>> >> X libraries are already installed on countless
>> >> systems, and they're not going to magically acquire .pc files just
>> >> because you say you need them.  If an autotooled package requires them,
>> >> the autotooled package is broken.
>> >
>> >Autotools do not require them...pkg-config just makes autoconf work a lot
>> >easier. I could write custom autoconf macros that test for Xrender in
>> >common locations, or we could put pkg-config support in and it would not
>> >have to guess. The .pc files tell it where to find the libs.
>> 
>> I'd love to see your time machine.  Dunno how else you're going to avoid
>> writing those custom autoconf macros :-).
>
>Well, to some extent, I think the goal is that in 5 years people aren't 
>*still* saying "if you had a time machine, and could put those .pc files
>in 5 years ago..."
>
>It's also possible to make macros that have fallback checks simpler and
>more reliable for systems that *do* have the .pc files, and to fall back
>to the old methods only where the .pc files don't exist.
>
>Finally, while autoconf includes macros for -lX11, there are lots of
>other libraries that XFree86 ships where there are no standard autoconf
>macros (libXv, libXxf86misc, and so forth.) .pc files for these would
>have considerable utility.
>
>One more thing to mention is that pkg-config is often useful 
>when compiling on the command line or in one off make files.
>
> gcc -o mytest mytest.c `pkg-config --libs --cflags x11`
>
>Is, if not easier to type, easier to remember, than specifying 
>the flags (-L/usr/X11R6/lib -lX11 -lm, usually, for XFree86,
>if it's installed in the standard location) manually.

In five minutes I can come up with a dumb script that extracts the same
information from imake.  Proof of concept attached.  Works for Xv,
Xxf86misc, etc.

David
--
David Dawes
Founder/committer/developer                     The XFree86 Project
www.XFree86.org/~dawes

Attachment: imake-config.sh
Description: Bourne shell script

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