Package: pkg-config Version: 0.29-4+b1 Severity: serious Justification: missing dependency
# i686-linux-gnu-pkg-config --libs libssl Package libssl was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libssl.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable No package 'libssl' found # ls /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/libssl.pc /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/libssl.pc # apt -y install dpkg-dev ... # i686-linux-gnu-pkg-config --libs libssl -lssl # In this case, i686-linux-gnu-pkg-config is a symlink to /usr/share/pkg-config-crosswrapper and that script has the following line: multiarch="`dpkg-architecture -t"${triplet}" -qDEB_HOST_MULTIARCH 2>/dev/null`" It calls dpkg-architecture (which is in dpkg-dev) and igores all errors. In the absence of dpkg-architecture, the result will be empty and pkg-config doesn't work. If adding dpkg-dev to Depends is not desired, the cross-wrapper could be extended to give a useful error message in case $multiarch is empty: --- /usr/share/pkg-config-crosswrapper +++ /usr/share/pkg-config-crosswrapper @@ -11,6 +11,10 @@ triplet="${basename%-pkg-config}" # Normalized multiarch path if any, e.g. i386-linux-gnu for i386 multiarch="`dpkg-architecture -t"${triplet}" -qDEB_HOST_MULTIARCH 2>/dev/null`" + if test "$?" != 0; then + echo "Please apt install dpkg-dev to use this program." 1>&2 + exit 1 + fi # Native multiarch path native_multiarch="$(cat /usr/lib/pkg-config.multiarch)" dpkg-dev should be added to Recommends in that case. Helmut