[systemd-devel] [PATCH] build: generate pkg-config files during configure

[Simon McVittie]

On 12/03/15 16:17, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
> I wonder if in a few years libsystemd.pc should have been
> libsystemd-1.0.pc because a libsystemd-2.0.pc became needed?

If libsystemd breaks C API, the systemd developers would just have to
declare that "libsystemd" actually meant "libsystemd API 1.0", and so is
superseded by "libsystemd API 2.0". That wouldn't be the end of the world.

It's how you name your *second* API version (i.e. not the same as the
first) that really matters :-)

> ps. In GLib this isn't being done with a cp in Makefile.am

GLib's API is expected to be long-term-stable (2.0 seems to have been
released in or before 2002), so automating the handling of API breaks
would be unnecessary effort.

Tracker switched API version on a regular basis until recently, which is
presumably why that automation was worth having.

> and yet
> other projects (dconf) don't do API versioning with the .pc filename.

If dconf never breaks API, no problem; if it does, it will hopefully
start including an API version in the .pc filename at that point.

-- 
Simon McVittie
Collabora Ltd. <http://www.collabora.com/>