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Re: configure's dependency on pkg-config
From: |
Jan Djärv |
Subject: |
Re: configure's dependency on pkg-config |
Date: |
Sun, 13 Nov 2011 12:08:18 +0100 |
Hello.
13 nov 2011 kl. 00:56 skrev Stephen Berman:
> On Sun, 13 Nov 2011 00:12:43 +0100 Jan Djärv <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> I don't know why you are opposed to installing pkg-config, but it is not
>> Emacs
>> choice. libxml2 has made pkg-config the way for users of that library to
>> find
>> out compiler and linker flags as well as dependencies on other libraries. So
>> of course Emacs uses that. Who are we to argue about the validity of that
>> descision? Ditto for Gtk, dbus, and others.
>
> I'm not opposed to installing pkg-config, I just didn't know I was
> supposed to to get Emacs to use libxml2, until I looked in configure.
> If it had been documented in INSTALL, I would have been spared that
> effort and time. (That libxml2 provides pkg-config data I also didn't
> know: I just checked, and the only mention of "pkg-config" in the entire
> libxml2-2.7.8 source tree is in the ChangeLog, which I didn't read
> before installing libxml2.)
>
Every package that can be used provides the pkg-config data. The one for
libxml2 is generated from libxml-2.0.pc.in in the source.
I think pkg-config is considered standard, so along with tar, cp and other
standard utilities, it is not mentioned. It is only a problem for people
building their own distributions, which is far fewer nowdays that say 10 years
ago. And if you are doing that, pkg-config is really something you need to
install. But adding it to INSTALL is not a big deal.
The reason for not mentioning all the libraries using pkg-config in INSTALL is
that almost all new libraries support it. So we would probably need to add
every new library Emacs uses to INSTALL.
Jan D.