Re: TODO

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Fri, 2004-11-12 at 23:02 -0800, Jacob Meuser wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 13, 2004 at 04:27:28AM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-11-12 at 14:31 -0800, Jacob Meuser wrote:
> > > On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 03:33:02PM -0600, Albert Chin wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 11:20:13AM +0000, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
> > > > > Albert Chin wrote:
> > > > > > On Wed, Nov 10, 2004 at 03:43:48PM +0000, Scott James Remnant wrote:
> > > > > > 
> > > > > >>On Tue, 2004-11-09 at 14:24 +0000, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>>6.  Absorb the functionality of the aberration called pkg-config. 
> > > > > >>>Libtool
> > 
> > > > > >>>    already has all the information it needs, we just need to 
> > > > > >>> teach it (or
> > > > > >>>    maybe a subsidiary script) to spit out link flags after poking 
> > > > > >>> around
> > > > > >>>    in a dependency chain of .la files.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>There's actually a couple of things pkg-config does that Libtool 
> > > > > >>doesn't
> > > > > >>currently do.  pkg-config's main job can be summed up simply as 
> > > > > >>enabling
> > > > > >>parallel-installed -dev packages.
> > > 
> > > since when does libtool care about CFLAGS
> > It hardly can avoid doing so if wanting to support multilibs.
> 
> of course, it cares about _some_ CFLAGS at build time.  it does not
> care about where the headers are going to be installed though, or what
> CPPFLAGS need to be set either ... functionality you do get from
> pkg-config.
Well, current libtool does not support multilibs.

If multilibs should ever be able to support them, I'd expect libtool
having to examine the whole command being used, comprising CFLAGS and
CPPFLAGS (There exist targets where multilib variants are being
triggered by preprocessor flags)

> > >  or package versions?
> > It doesn't care about package versions, but it has to care about library
> > versions and paths to libraries.
> 
> again, functionality provided by pkg-config.
No. Like libtool, pkg-config only covers some parts of the whole
picture. *.la's contain information pkg-config has not notion about, and
*.pc's can contain information libtool has no notion about.

(libtool-*.la's contain linker/library specific info. *.pc's basically
are more or less a poor-man's registry/database and can contain
arbitrary information).

> I am contesting the claim "Libtool already has all the information
> it needs".
Agreed, but neither has pkg-config. It's just that their functionality
intersects and partially conflicts.

Ralf