pkg-config (Re: Linux binary compatibility)

[David Faure]

On Saturday 28 February 2004 21:30, Owen Taylor wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-02-28 at 15:07, Thomas Leonard wrote:
> > > > Great, another binary-compat problem fixed :-)
> > > 
> > > This time .... I can't babysit people forever. A part of the autopackage
> > > developer guide is dedicated to binary portability. I want to flesh it
> > > out and perhaps split it off into a separate book. 
> > > 
> > > Do you think it'd be worth collaborating on such a guidebook and hosting
> > > it at freedesktop.org?
> > 
> > If they'll have it (I expect so; CC'd). It seems that a lot of these
> > problems could actually be fixed upstream, though, rather than just
> > written about.
> > 
> > For example, instead of doing
> > 
> > LDFLAGS = `pkg-config --libs gtk+-2.0 | sed 's/-lpangoxft-[^ ]*//'`
> > 
> > in every program's Makefile
> 
> Please don't do *that* in *any* programs Makefile.

BTW, the -l libs should be separate from the -L flags.
In standard use of automake, the first ones go to LIBADD or LDADD, while the 
second one goes to LDFLAGS.
Slightly different issue, but also one that makes people write lots of sed'ing
over pkg-config's output.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).