RE: PKG_CHECK_MODULES on system without pkg-config installed?

[Jef Driesen]

address@hidden wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 10:02 UTC, Jef Driesen  wrote:
> > I'm aware of the advantage of using pkg-config. I even supply the *.pc
> > files for my own projects. But the point is that if I want to support 
> > systems
> > that don't have pkg-config installed (like Mac OS X in my case), I have to
> > provide a fallback with manual detection anyway.
>
> But you are not everyone. In some cases, the use of the library is
> optional, or there is a bundled copy of the library used when an
> installed one isn't found via pkg-config. It's reasonable to provide
> no fallback probing for an installed headers and libs -- you just
> proceed without or substitute.
>
> > So why not skip pkg-config entirely?
>
> Personally, I want to never write any more manual detection code when
> pkg-config will do the job. I'm also a big fan of the way
> PKG_CONFIG_PATH lets me customize my choices as a user of a system
> which is shared with and administered by others. The staff likes a 6
> year old version of openssl with backported patches as of three years
> ago, which triggers compiler warnings that modern openssl headers
> don't? I love that I can install a newer openssl in my homedir and
> arrange my PKG_CONFIG_PATH to find my openssl before the decrepit one,
> for packages that respect any openssl.pc found via pkg-config. I
> could get by without pkg-config, but it would mean specifying extra
> configure options repeatedly to point to my local openssl. pkg-config
> lets me enshrine that preference once and get on with more important
> things than remember which combination of overrides I need at
> configure time.

You don't have to convince me of the advantages of using pkg-config. I want to 
use pkg-config for exactly the same reasons as you explain. But when I tried to 
build my project on a system without pkg-config installed it failed. Proceeding 
without the feature (that would be enabled through the pkg-config checks) would 
be perfectly acceptable, except that autoconf fails on the PKG_* macros and 
aborts. So I can't build anything at all and that's the main problem.