Re: Build problem

[<tim...@en...>]

Ethan Merritt wrote:
> On Tuesday 27 June 2006 12:34 pm, Timoth=E9e Lecomte wrote:
>  =20
>> Nevermind, this patch does not solve anything. I uninstalled
>> pkg-config, and can reproduce exactly your problem (AC_MSG_WARN
>> undefined and PKG_CHECK_MODULES with wrong syntax).
>>
>> However, I think I have found the right solution. As explained in
>> http://programming.linux.com/programming/05/08/11/1923248.shtml?tid=3D=
2
>> 2 ("Best Practices with autotools"), we should always distribute the
>> macros we are using, because the user may have an old and buggy macro
>> or he may not have it at all.
>>
>> So the solution is to put 'pkg.m4' taken from the pkg-config package
>> in <gnuplot source directory>/m4
>>    =20
>
> I would prefer to remove the dependence on pkgconfig altogether.
>
> Since when is it reasonable to require a particular package manager?
>  =20
Take a look at configure.in :
- gd has its own configuring tool, it's called gdlib-config
- libpdf has its own configuring tool, it's called pdflib-config
- wxWidgets has its own configuring tool, it's called wx-config

pkg-config is just an effort to write a universal tool to achieve the=20
same result. It *is* broadly used, see the attached file, which is the=20
output of 'pkg-config --list-all' on my machine.

> Particularly one which is only at release level 0.19, is not installed
> by default, and clearly has portability issues.
>  =20
Come on, the version number does not mean anything by itself. Its=20
changelog goes back to 2000, that's 6 years of use. The portability=20
issues were my fault, as I did not include the macros as I should have=20
done. pkg-config works on Unix, Mac, Windows, and Cygwin once you=20
installed it correctly.

> As I previously described, in order to get wxWidgets up and running
> I first had to find and install pkgconfig. But that wasn't sufficient;
> I then had to go back and re-install earlier packages. What a pain.
>  =20
I think that's the fault of your distribution.

> As tested here, and confirmed by Hardy Griech, configure + install
> works just fine without the pkgconfig macros.  Of course there can
> always be compatibility issues with different library versions,
> but we really need to check these at run-time or install-time,
> not at the time ./configure is run.

Checking for libraries' versions at run-time ? Unless I have cairo>0.9,=20
the necessary functions are not even defined in the headers. That's a=20
compile-time requirement.

Relying on the magic of wxWidgets compile and linking flags ? What if I=20
want to write a static terminal based on cairo and independant of=20
wxWidgets then ?

Best regards,

Timoth=E9e