On Oct 23, 2019, at 09:20, Daniel J. Luke wrote:
> On Oct 23, 2019, at 9:58 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>> On Oct 23, 2019, at 08:56, Daniel J. Luke wrote:
>>> On Oct 22, 2019, at 9:49 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>>>> Or does the port use libxml2? If so, it may be using a bad method of
>>>> finding libxml2. One bad method of finding libxml2 is using the
>>>> xml2-config script.
>>>
>>> Should we just patch the xml2-config we distribute (and attempt to push
>>> those changes upstream) instead? http://www.xmlsoft.org/FAQ.html tells
>>> people to use xml2-config (so I suspect other upstream projects will be
>>> reluctant to include patches that switch from using xml2-config to
>>> pkg-config).
>>
>> That would break anything trying to build static libraries with it.
>
> :(
>
> It's probably less work to fix the (rare) use case of building static
> libraries than the (common) case of dynamic linking with libxml2
It's not just about fixing any MacPorts ports that are using xml2-config to
build static libraries. It's also about users trying to use MacPorts ports as
dependencies for things they do outside of MacPorts. I don't think we should
ship an xml2-config that behaves differently from upstream's.
>> We should push upstream to change the documentation to recommend pkg-config
>> and to explain the problems for dynamic linking when using xml2-config.
>
> Unfortunately, the libxml2 port doesn't have a maintainer - do we need a
> volunteer to contact them about this to try to get it updated?
I'm working on a lot of other things already, so if you or someone else can
take on the task of having that dialog with them, that would be great.
