[Poppler-bugs] [Bug 9730] uninstalled .pc file for poppler

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9730

--- Comment #8 from Brian Cameron <brian.cameron at oracle.com> 2010-06-19 20:19:52 PDT ---

Uninstalled pc files are not really a "feature" since it has no real affect on
the built program.  It is really a build-time feature, making it possible for
other modules to build with poppler even if poppler is not yet installed on the
system.

After looking at the poppler*pc.cmake files, I do not think there is any
additional work to "integrate" the uninstalled-pc feature with these cmake pc
files.  To me, it looks like these poppler*pc.cmake are used to build the
pkg-config files that get installed on the system when cmake is used.  For
example, they seem to make sure that CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX gets set properly for
prefix.

However, uninstalled-pc files are never installed to the system (they only live
in the source directory), and never need to be aware of variables that relate
to where the module will be installed.  Instead uninstalled-pc files just refer
to the relative path of any .la files in the build tree and the location of
header files in the build tree.  This way, if you build a module like evince
using poppler*uninstalled.pc files, it knows how to set Cflags and Ldflags
properly to build against the built code in the uninstalled module.  So, an
uninstalled.pc file should work properly with any build system that calls
pkg-config to set Cflags, Ldflags, etc.

The only variable that uninstalled.pc files typically need to have set is
VERSION, so it is necessary to have uninstalled.pc.in files and have the actual
uninstalled.pc file get generated by configure so that the VERSION gets set
properly.  But VERSION is obviously hardcoded and does not depend on whether
cmake is used or not.

So, I believe it is only necessary to provide the 7 uninstalled.pc.in files,
the minor changes to configure to build the uninstalled.pc files from the
uninstalled.pc.in files, and add the new uninstalled.pc.in files to EXTRA_DIST
in Makefile.am.  That should be all the work that is needed.

It would be fine if they could be added to a future version like 0.16 if you do
not think it is appropriate for 0.14.

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