pkg-config-lite

[Paul Bender]

On 3/30/2012 7:53 PM, LRN wrote:
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> On 19.03.2012 22:51, Oliver Lange wrote:
>>
>> Howdy,
>>
>> pkg-config 0.26 without glib dependency:
>>
>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/pkgconfiglite/
>>
>> Maybe you want to check this out. It shows how little code from
>> glib is required by pkg-config. It has no dependencies (other than
>> libc).
>>
>> Changes are minor and maybe you'd like to take over?
>>
> It sounds cool, but pkg-config-0.26 (or was it 0.25?) actually REMOVED
> a built-in copy of glib-1.2 that was used to avoid circular dependency
> and to make pkg-config self-contained.
> It barely worked on Windows - i was able to fix it up by transplanting
> quite a bit of mangled glib-2.x source code into it, but that just
> shows that pkg-config IS dependent on glib-2, and tapping that
> dependency can bring benefits (again, if the dependency is not used
> extensively at the moment, it's because the transition is still fresh
> enough).
>
> That is, making pkg-config self-contained that way most likely goes in
> a direction opposite the one pkg-config is moving in.

Making pkg-config dependent on anything will ensure that pkg-config is 
dropped over time. The inane idea that it is ok to make pkg-config 
depend on a package that uses pkg-config is sure to guarantee that 
distributions will not update pkg-config. I maintain a Linux 
distribution and I have no plans to upgrade pkg-config because of the 
the inane decision to create this dependency. Because of this decision, 
I expect that within five years pkg-config will no longer exist. Nobody 
maintaining a distribution wants this circular dependency. Therefore, we 
will end up dropping pkg-config.