pkgconf - an almost C99-only rewrite of pkg-config

[William Pitcock]

hi,

i would like to introduce pkgconf, a basically from-scratch rewrite of
pkg-config i did when pkg-config 0.26 introduced a circular
dependency.

pkgconf works quite a bit differently than pkg-config.  in effect, it
uses a mathematical problem-solving strategy where problems are
presented as functions of a computed acyclic dependency graph.  it
then traverses the dependency graph to solve the necessary problem and
collect requested metadata from the various nodes in the dependency
graph.

the benefits to this approach are numerous, but the big ones are:

- straightforward, easy to debug code
- LIBNAME and LDPATH linker flag entries are ordered by dependency,
which seems to speed up linking a little
- possibility of visualization of module inter-dependencies using
graphviz (pkgconf --digraph option)

gentoo and alpine linux distributions have pkgconf available for
testing right now.

you can find out more about pkgconf here:  http://github.com/nenolod/pkgconf

william