Re: pkg-config comments

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

On 24 Nov 2000, Martin Baulig wrote:

> James Henstridge <james daa com au> writes:
> 
> > > However, the GNOME_PKGCONFIG_* macros from gnome-common/macros2 do work
> > > just fine; examples are in gnome-libs HEAD and libgtop HEAD ... :-)
> > 
> > If it is a good macro, then it should be distributed with pkg-config.  I
> > thought we were moving away from having a macros directory.
> 
> They do not work when they're shiped together with pkg-config.

Users don't care about the m4 file.  If people are building things from
tarballs, then all the macros will be expanded beforehand, so it shouldn't
matter.

> 
> They only work if they're shiped in a package which users always must have
> installed, such as gnome-common - otherwise you won't get a clear error message
> if you don't have a recent enough pkg-config but some very confusing and weird
> autoconf failures (so you won't be able to see from the error message that it's
> pkg-config which you're missing).

If by users you mean people who download stuff from CVS and build it, then
yes.  If you mean people who build stuff from tarballs, no.  I think we
can require people who use CVS to install a tool like pkg-config.

> 
> In GNOME 2.x we are already away from a macros directory, the macros are
> installed by gnome-common, so that all applications - no matter whether they're
> in GNOME CVS or outside of it - can use them.

I thought the agreed on solution was to distribute these macros with the
libraries/programs they are written for (where they belong).  Having them
in a special macros package is basically the same as what we have now.

James.