Re: Libtool and Pkg-Config

[Gary V . Vaughan]

Hi Eric,

On Saturday 21 April 2001  6:12 pm, Eric Lemings wrote:
> Because of a growing number of config scripts for packages in GNOME 1.2
> (e.g. glib-config, xml-config, orbit-config. etc), development of GNOME
> 2.0 spawned a separate tool called pkg-config that allows all packages
> to use one tool rather than several different scripts to query compile
> flags, link flags, and other configuration data.
>
> The functionality of pkg-config seems to me to have a lot of overlap
> with the goals of libtool.  I was wondering if anyone had considered
> adding an eighth mode to libtool that just queries the installed
> library for the same information that pkg-config provides.

Yes, I have been thinking about this.  Although I was planning on writing a 
macro for autoconf-2.50 which would help generate the foo-config scripts.  I 
think your idea is a much better approach, and I'll add it to the TODO list 
presently.  Thanks.

> Since most packages that use pkg-config also use libtool, I think this
> would be a good way to reduce maintainer and developer dependencies.

Most definitely.  Do you think there is any chance of rustling up some 
support for sending in a patch to get the ball rolling?

Cheers,
        Gary.
-- 
  ___              _   ___   __              _         mailto: address@hidden
 / __|__ _ _ ___ _| | / / | / /_ _ _  _ __ _| |_  __ _ ___       address@hidden
| (_ / _` | '_|// / |/ /| |/ / _` | || / _` | ' \/ _` | _ \
 \___\__,_|_|\_, /|___(_)___/\__,_|\_,_\__, |_||_\__,_|//_/
home page:  /___/                      /___/                  gpg public key:
http://www.oranda.demon.co.uk           http://www.oranda.demon.co.uk/key.asc