Mac OS X and pkg-config

[Stephan Bergmann]

On 06/10/2015 11:41 AM, Khaled Hosny wrote:
> I’m not saying we should use pkg-config on Mac, all I’m asking for is
> what kind of breakages are expected when pkg-config is found, because I
> didn’t experience any, to find better way to fix it. That better way
> might be to set PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR to an empty value (and may be
> PKG_CONFIG_PATH as well), it may be something else, but I need to know
> what is the actual breakage that I need to fix.

I guess nobody kept track of all the various problems that got reported 
over time and were tracked down to polluted environments on Mac OS X 
(let alone the ones never even reported in the first place).

Your goal of trying to make the build experience easier is laudable, but 
I fear that your assumption that there is a simple, robust fix to shield 
the LO build from polluted environments is wrong.

Using presence of pkg-config as a canary to detect polluted environments 
was probably born out of pragmatism.  I guess that there are further 
problems with polluted environments beyond presence of pkg-config.