On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, Paul Davis wrote: > >What is needed is a "database" which acts as a registry of installed > >packages. This would be updatable by 'make install' as well as binary > >packaging tools. > > all of GNOME is now using pkg-config for this purpose. > > > A tool would be provided to formulate the optimum > >-I, -L, and -llibs options required to build using a set of libraries. > > pkg-config doesn't do that. its an almost impossible task unless you
Are you talking about some new tool that I had not previously heard about or are you talking about a script like the '/usr/local/bin/gnome-config' I see on my system? If the latter, then that is the type of trivial *-config script that I described as being totally useless to configure a large package that needs to use options from several (or many!) of these scripts. If this works for gnome; a tightly controlled environment; then that's great. It doesn't work in the general case though. In the general case there is no feedback loop to resolve problems as there is in a project like gnome. Unfortunately gtk standardized this type of script through proliferation. The proliferation occured because no other option was offered. It's mere popularity does not make it the right solution. The scripts options do not even align with Autoconf since Autoconf distinguishes options with finer granularity than the *-config scripts do: *-config Autoconf ========== ================= --libs LDFLAGS + LIBS --cflags CPPFLAGS + CFLAGS The munging of LDFLAGS and LIBS to create the output from the --libs option creates a bloody mess when you try to blend these options together. Linker directory search order and library link order are totally lost if a simple concatenation of options is used. The only proper solution is one based on a rules database in which the dependency requirements for each package can be expressed so that the dependencies can be reliabily satisified by the build environment. Libtools .la files do not provide this database. Pkg-config scripts do not provide this database. Bob ====================================== Bob Friesenhahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen _______________________________________________ Libtool mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/libtool
