Re: TODO

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Jacob,

Jacob Meuser wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 14, 2004 at 05:09:08PM -0500, Daniel Reed wrote:
>
> > On 2004-11-14T14:56-0600, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> > ) On Sun, 14 Nov 2004, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
> > ) > $ PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/libgdiplus10/lib/pkgconfig
> > ) You seem to be a victim of a package install where every package has
> > ) used its own unique installation prefix.  It seems to me that most
> > ) systems use just one or two installation prefixes.
> >
> > [http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#OPTADDONAPPLICATIONSOFTWAREPACKAGES]
> >         /opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software
> >         packages.
> >
> >         A package to be installed in /opt must locate its static files in a
> >         separate /opt/<package> or /opt/<provider> directory tree, where
> >         <package> is a name that describes the software package and
> >         <provider> is the provider's LANANA registered name.
> >
> > ...
> >
> >         The directories /opt/bin, /opt/doc, /opt/include, /opt/info,
> >         /opt/lib, and /opt/man are reserved for local system administrator
> >         use. Packages may provide "front-end" files intended to be placed in
> >         (by linking or copying) these reserved directories by the local
> >         system administrator, but must function normally in the absence of
> >         these reserved directories.
> >
> > (It may be arguable that having to manually specify paths to find .pc files
> > to pkg-config is not functioning "normally"--at least not within the stated
> > goals of PKGConfig's developers--as Gary pointed out.)
>
>
> huh?  so pkg-config is supposed to look in _every_ directory
> to find .pc files?

Nope.  Just the ones required to let me link with the library I specify.

> besides the second part of what you quoted is what should have
> happened on Gary's system, so instead of all the separate paths
> under /opt, there would have simply been /opt/lib/pkgconfig.

But the point of splitting things into separate directories is so that
I can have parallel installs of, say, libpng-1.2.4 and libpng-1.2.7, and
link them against, say, zlib-1.1.4 and zlib-1.2.2 respectively.  You
can't do that with a shared pkgconfig directory.  And without a lot of
manual intervention, pkg-config actually makes it harder to do that than
just looking up the dependencies by hand. :-(

> yes, because they "*want* to isolate each package", but the
> administrator failed to "either manage a system-wide set of
> $*PATH environment variables or manage symlinks from other well-known
> locations (maybe as part of a simple form of software management)."

There shouldn't be any need to do this.  All the information was already
known when the .pc file was made, but it wasn't saved.

> _any_ tool that needs information that is hidden from it will of
> course not be as functional as it could be.

pkg-config could either get it from ldd at link time, or at install
time from configure.  Or it could co-operate with libtool...

Cheers,
        Gary.
--
Gary V. Vaughan      ())_.  address@hidden,gnu.org}
Research Scientist   ( '/   http://tkd.kicks-ass.net
GNU Hacker           / )=   http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool
Technical Author   `(_~)_   http://sources.redhat.com/autobook

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