On 2007-02-10 11:48:55 -0800 Richard Frith-Macdonald
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The current setup was particularly designed to 'play nice with the
rest of
the world'.
You can't get much nicer than a file in a standard location which
both the
shell and makefiles can use. A pkg-config file on the other hand
does
*not* play nice with the reset of the world. It can't be used
except on
systems where pkg-config is installed or where software is specially
written
to read it.
It seems to me that GNUstep.conf and pkg-config have rather different
purposes. GNUstep.conf is distinctly more universal/portable which
is
critical for its intended use of relocating software and controlling
options. On the other hand pkg-config metadata is convenient for
getting
command line flags but no good when pkg-config is not installed. So
I like
pkg-config as an option for external use, but not as a dependency...
I'm in
favor of gnustep-make storing the info it needs redundantly so that
our
makefiles can run reliably but people can use pkg-config externally.
I often need to build gnustep-base and proprietory software which
uses it on
solaris (and sometimes windows) systems that I don't own ... and the
fewer
packages I have to install to do it, the better.
The 'dependency' on pkg-config is exagerated actually... if pkg-config
is not installed
as i somewhere in this thread suggested
GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES ?= $(shell pkg-config --variable=makefiles)
include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/common.make
you could just set GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES and be done with it.
that line is functionally equivalent to
ifeq ($(origin GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES), undefined
GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES = $(shell pkg-config --variable=makefiles)
endif
and if you tried to ./configure something which required the gnustep
pkg-config support
you'd get an error that pkg-config wasn't found in the configure.log
this was so that new makefiles could work with old gnustep-make
versions
but is equally usable with new gnustep-makes without pkg-config.
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