Re: Build problem

[Ethan A M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Monday 26 June 2006 10:28 pm, Juergen Wieferink wrote:
> On Monday 26 June 2006 21:25 Hardy Griech wrote:
> > checking how to run the C++ preprocessor... g++ -E
> > ./configure: line 13465: syntax error near unexpected token `CAIRO,'
> > ./configure: line 13465: `    PKG_CHECK_MODULES(CAIRO, cairo >= 0.9.0,'
> > 
> I doubt this is a cygwin problem as I have the same problems on my
> linux box.  I once also had the ./configure-error given above.  Now
> thy ./prepare & build process stops with the autoconf and the
> AC_MSG_WARN error.  The problems rose with the inclusion of the
> wxwidgets-terminal.  This shouldn't be a problem in this sense, but
> my libraries (cairo, wxwidgets, ...) are not recent enough for the
> terminal.

I am reasonably certain that the problem is due to a dependency on
the pkgconfig package. Yet another poorly designed tool created with
the best of intentions.  The problem is that if pkgconfig is present
on your system, then when *other* packages that know about it are
installed they create various extra configuration and macro files for
later use. This means that an installation in the presence of pkgconfig
is different from an installation in the absence of pkgconfig.

If you have installed most of your system without pkgconfig, and then
later on try to install something (let's call it B) that wants it,
there's a problem. Installing pkgconfig itself is not sufficient to fix
the problem. You have to instal pkgconfig, and then go back and
*reinstall* the various other packages so that they register themselves
with pkgconfig and hence problem package B can query pkgconfig for 
their presence.  

Bad design all around, as I say.   I'd be in favor of removing all
the PKG_CHECK_MODULES macros from configure.in, and finding another
mechanism to look for these features.  I suspect  AC_CHECK_LIB
would be sufficient, and we already know it works.

As a quick work-around, I suggest you try the attached patch.
It just deletes all the pkgconfig MACROS from configure.in
You may get build errors if the gtk+ libraries are not found, but
that's fixable.   Tested and works here, for whatever that's worth.


-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7742