Re: [ft-devel] using pkg-config

[Miles Bader]

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> writes:
> Does it make sense to completely switch to pkg-config?  All of the
> above libraries provide .pc files.  However, I wonder whether there
> are situations where there usage of pkg-config is problematic.
>
> A certain burden is that pkg-config itself must be installed (or
> pkgconf, which does the same in a probably better way).  Is this a
> hassle on some platforms?

My impression is that although on "mainstream" linux distros it's a
pretty good bet pkg-config is available, it's far from universal if
you care about the fringes -- and freetype looks very much like the
sort of library that tends to care more about the fringes than usual.

It also used to the case that pkg-config didn't handle
cross-compilation properly (I haven't checked this in a while), which
seems like it would be an issue for freetype.

It's not very hard to try both in turn, e.g.:

   have_libfoo=no
   PKG_CHECK_MODULES([luafoo], [luafoo], [have_luafoo=yes], [:])
   if test $have_libfoo = no; then
     AC_CHECK_LIB([foo], [somefun], [have_luafoo=yes])
   fi
   if test $have_libfoo = yes; then
     ...do stuff for libfoo...
   fi

Should fallback gracefully to traditional checking if pkg-config isn't
installed..

[When libraries are installed in funny places it can be a little more
annoying without pkg-config, but AFAIK, libpng usually isn't one of
those libraries...]

-miles

-- 
Innards, n. pl. The stomach, heart, soul, and other bowels.