Re: PKG_CHECK_MODULES on system without pkg-config installed?

[Daniel Herring]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2011, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:

> * Roger Leigh wrote on Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 01:03:16PM CET:
> > This is not meant to sound like a troll, but: is anyone really
> > *really* using static linking in 2011?
>
> I'd love to answer no, but at least parts of the HPC crowd will do
> almost anything to get a couple percent more performance out of their
> code plus libraries.  Static linking is a real low-hanging fruit there.

Static linking is also nice for self-contained executables.

All sorts of benefits including ease of distribution and not worrying 
about libraries crossing when old versions are kept for testing.

I've worked on several projects where we've intentionally reverted to 
static linking for such reasons.  They were medium-sized codebases with 
several libraries and executables, generally deployed to a couple dozen 
machines.

One project in particular required that we keep all deployed versions in 
working order on a test server for easy use.  Speed and space weren't 
issues.  Simple correctness was.

- Daniel

P.S.  pkg-config suffers many of the same issues as imake, but in 
generally less bad ways.  I often need details not forseen by the 
pkg-config writer, and it is frustrating trying to keep multiple 
pkg-config environments for similar but different builds.