relocatable .la files

[C.J. Adams-Collier]

There was a thread some time ago (11/2004) about having a variable in .la files evaluated at runtime.  This seems like a good idea to me, and would work well with pkg-config's ${pcfiledir} variable.

It might also work to have something like `pkg-config  --libs` in the dependency_libs field of a library's .la file...

For instance, my /usr/lib/libg[dt]k-x11-2.0.la files include the following in their dependency_libs fields:

address@hidden:~$ grep dependency_libs /usr/lib/libg[dt]k-
x11-2.0.la 
/usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.la:dependency_libs=' /usr/lib/libpangocairo-
1.0.la /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.la /usr/lib/libcairo.la -lfreetype -lz -lpng12 -lfontconfig -lXext -lXrender -lX11 -lXinerama -lXi -lXrandr -lXcursor -lXfixes /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-
2.0.la /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.la -ldl /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.la /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.la /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.la
 -lrt -lm'
/usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.la:dependency_libs=' /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.la
 -lXext -lXinerama -lXi -lXrandr -lXcursor -lXfixes /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.la /usr/lib/libpangocairo-1.0.la /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.la
 /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.la /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.la /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.la /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.la -ldl /usr/lib/libglib-
2.0.la -lrt /usr/lib/libcairo.la -lfreetype -lz -lfontconfig -lpng12 -lXrender -lX11 -lm'

The same information is returned by querying pkg-config for gtk+-
x11-2.0's libraries:

$ pkg-config --libs gtk+-x11-2.0
-lgtk-x11-2.0
 -lgdk-x11-2.0 -latk-1.0 -lgdk_pixbuf-2.0 -lm -lpangocairo-1.0 -lfontconfig -lXext -lXrender -lXinerama -lXi -lXrandr -lXcursor -lXfixes -lpango-1.0 -lcairo -lX11 -lgobject-2.0 -lgmodule-2.0 -ldl -lglib-2.0  

Would it be feasible to add a field to .la fies which indicated the pkg-config package name to query for linker args?

This would help our build system avoid 
the madness caused by hard-coded paths in .la files.

Looking forward to your response,

C.J.

-- 
moo.