Re: confusing option name for wxWidgets configuration

[Mojca M. <moj...@gm...>]

On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 7:22 PM, sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
> On Wednesday, 07 August 2013, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 7:19 AM, sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
>
>>> The "official" options are:
>>>     AC_ARG_WITH(wxdir,
>>>                 [  --with-wxdir=PATH       Use uninstalled version of wxWidgets in PATH],
>>>                 [ wx_config_name="$withval/wx-config"
>
> Wait. Are you saying it would be better to have
>    --with-wxdir=PATH
> than it is to have the current
>    --with-wx-config=PATH
> ??

Yes.

Not for the reason of "more functionality", but for the reason of
better consistency with upstream wxWidgets.

> I don't mind that, but either way it asks for a PATH not a filename.
> And you'd still have to create the file $withval/wx-config

Yes, I know. This is why I suggested to support both --with-wxdir=PATH
and --with-wx-config=FILE, but even if supporting both isn't
acceptable for gnuplot, it would still be better to have consistent
name.

> Finally, I don't understand why there is a problem having both versions
> 2.8 and 2.9 installed.

It's not a problem of not being able to have both installed at some
obscure location. But it's impossible to have wx-config installed for
both at default location.

On the link you gave me there's an example of using wx-config:
    g++ `wx-config --cxxflags` -o out *.cpp `wx-config --libs`

Say that "wx-config" points to the installation of version 2.9 (it
cannot point to both). On my machine wx-config --cflags returns the
following for example:
    -I/opt/local/lib/wx/include/osx_cocoa-unicode-2.9
-I/opt/local/include/wx-2.9 ...

If another package requires 2.8 and simply calls "wx-config" (as in
the example above) without letting the user configure where to find
wx-config, one simply cannot install that package without nasty
patches.

> For better or worse (mostly the latter) OSX does
> not have a system-wide ld.so.conf list of library paths, so there should not
> be a problem that causes only one of the two versions to be found as
> default by all programs.

I didn't understand that. (In case of gnuplot the library search path
is set by wx-config at compile time. Once the binary is compiled
against the right wxWidgets there are no problems any more. The only
"problem" arises when configuring/compiling software that depends on
wxWidgets.)

Mojca