Re: generating pc file

[Nick Bowler]

On 2012-09-20 13:43 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Nick Bowler <address@hidden> writes:
> > On 2012-09-20 13:14 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
> >> config.status also doesn't fully expand the variables, though, which is
> >> something that you'd want for this sort of application.  Otherwise, you
> >> have to know all of the possible ways in which one variable could
> >> reference another so that you can set all of them (and you can only
> >> write files that have a variable resolution system, although pkg-config
> >> does have one).  Note that the user can do things like
> >> --libdir='${datadir}/foo' at configure time, even if it's not common.
> 
> > Ah, but make will fully expand the variables.
> 
> Only the ones that you're explicitly overriding.  What about all the other
> variables that you may want to use with the same values that were set
> during configure?

Indeed, this is true.

However, is this really a problem in practice for anything but
installation directory variables?  All installation directory variables
are supposed to be overridable at make time, so they will all need
explicit overrides (at least all the ones you are intending to
substitute), and therefore they will all be fully expanded.

Other than installation directory variables (which need to be left
unexpanded so that make-time overrides work), if you need some
transformation done to a substituted variable at configure time, then
you should do that transformation at configure time.  Then config.status
will work.

Cheers,
-- 
Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/)