Checking for a library ... different ways ...

[Michel Briand]

Hello,

a very naive review of many configure.[in,ac] to find out how do others
do makes me ask this question :

Why the library developer does not provide a consistent way to check
for its library with automake/autoconf ?

The bad thing is that the library user will have to do the job of 1/
searching the good way, 2/ implement the check in configure.ac.

Adding to that the check could be implemented in many different ways :
an autoconf macro, calling a script (sdl-config for example), using
pkgconfig...

That's wonder me :))))

But maybe I'm too naive ;))))

Side question : a good distro could enforce that each library will
provide a pkgconfig file for example, or at least a .m4 file ?

Best regards,
Michel