> >> Thanks for the report. I think a better fix is to not to attempt to > >> install readline.pc if $(pkgconfigdir) is missing. > > > > Why not? If you are doing an install into DESTDIR for the purpose of > > bundling a pre-built binary for a distro, then $(pkgconfigdir) will be > > missing, because the ONLY things living in DESTDIR are what the package > > itself installs. When DESTDIR is empty, you're right that either > > $(pkgconfigdir) is likely to already exist, or that the user is not using > > pkg-config; but even that's a risky assumption (when bootstrapping a > > system, readline might be installed prior to pkg-config, and we shouldn't > > require the user to run 'make install' a second time just to install the > > pieces that weren't installed the first time). > > Good point about $(DESTDIR). I don't quite buy the bootstrapping argument.
Actually, I don't use DESTDIR, but my situation is equivalent: I use stow (https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/). Which means: I install every version of every package under a brand new directory tree (eg --prefix=/opt/stow.d/versions/readline-8.0-alpha/) and stow creates links from the package specific installation tree to "legacy" system directories (/usr/bin /usr/lib /usr/lib/pkgconfig etc.): so, also in my case the pkgconfig dir doesn't exist at install time, but I definitely want to create it and to install readline.pc -g
