Re: configure's dependency on pkg-config

[Jan Djärv]

Hi.

11 nov 2011 kl. 20:25 skrev Stephen Berman:

> I built a GNU/Linux system from sources (Linux From Scratch) and then
> built the current Emacs pretest on it with configure && make, but was
> surprised that configure failed to use libxml2, although I had built and
> installed the libxml2 files in the standard locations.  I then
> reconfigured Emacs, passing the libxml2 requirements to configure via
> CPPFLAGS, LDFLAGS and LIBS, but it still failed to use libxml2.  Then I
> looked at configure and found the reason:
> 
>  if test "$PKG_CONFIG" = "no" ; then
>     HAVE_LIBXML2=no
> 
> I don't have pkg-config installed on this system.  I tried passing
> PKG_CONFIG=1 to configure, but that didn't help, because if that
> variable is set, configure looks for the pkg-config executable.
> Finally, I simply hacked out the pkg-config bits around the libxml2
> tests in configure and passed the requirements via LIBXML2_CFLAGS and
> LIBXML2_LIBS, and this worked.  
> 
> Is there a better way to override configure's dependency on pkg-config
> for libraries such as libxml2, so that it would suffice to pass the
> standard variable CPPFLAGS, LDFLAGS and LIBS?  Or if there isn't, should
> there be?

I would assume libxml2 installs its .pc-file in /usr/lib/pkgconfig (or similar) 
when you install it, so all the info is there.  So why not just install 
pkg-config?  It is a very small package.

        Jan D.