pkg-config version confusion

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 1:59 AM, Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 10:27 PM, Jeffrey Walton <noloader at gmail.com> wrote:
>> When I check my Fedora 26 x86_64 machine:
>>
>>     $ command -v pkg-config
>>     /bin/pkg-config
>>     $ pkg-config --version
>>     1.3.12
>>
>> But when I check the pkg-config download at
>> https://pkgconfig.freedesktop.org/releases are it says the latest
>> version is 0.29.2 from MARCH 2017.
>>
>> Does anyone know what is going on with the version information? Is
>> 1.3.12 newer or older than 0.29.2?
>
> There are two different implementations:
>
> https://github.com/pkgconf/pkgconf is a reimplementation of
> https://pkgconfig.freedesktop.org/
>
> dank at hp500:~$ apt-cache policy pkgconf pkg-config
> pkgconf:
>   Installed: (none)
>   Candidate: 0.9.12-6
> pkg-config:
>   Installed: 0.29.1-0ubuntu2
>   Candidate: 0.29.1-0ubuntu2
>
> The origin of the second one was a desire for one
> that built without circular dependencies, iirc.

Thanks Dan.

That begs the next question for me, which should we use? I did not see
a discussion in the guide or the faq.

I'm a typical dumb user. I'm only doing this because things are broke.
If things "just worked" I would not be wasting time on it. As a dumb
user, I need prescriptive advice. I.e., "do X".

Jeff