Re: gnustep-make experiment

[Matt Rice]

On 2007-02-08 20:29:50 -0800 Nicola Pero 
<address@hidden> wrote:

> > > If we had gnustep-make depend on pkg-config, then you wouldn't be  
> > > able to 
> > > use GNUstep unless you installed pkg-config first.
> >
> > That's not entirely correct. GNUstep can be taught how to read 
> > pkgconfig-format-file, such as GNUstep.pc, thus eliminating the need 
> >  for 
> > GNUstep.conf entirely,
>
> We designed the GNUstep.conf syntax so that it can be very 
> efficiently read
> from makefiles, shells, and C/ObjC code.
>
> The 'pkg-config' meta-file format can not be read easily from 
> makefiles 
> without
> firing off a subprocess.  We'd then need to fire off an additional 
> subprocess
> for each invocation of make, which, performance-wise, is bad.

a quick test of a makefile executing pkg-config 1000 times takes about 
6 seconds..
say there are 5 invocations of pkg-config per invocation of make... 
thats 200 make processes.
This is a drop in the bucket.

all that make does is execute subprocesses.  And this seems to be an 
argument against
-config in general.

> PS: I must be missing your point completely because I don't really 
> understand 
> what you're
> trying to say.  Technically, you're suggesting we depend on the 
> gnome/gtk 
> config
> tools (which were not designed for us, so the integration would be 
> massively 
> painful)
> just for the sake of "being more similar to gnome/gtk".

pkg-config is not strictly a gnome/gtk tool (it may have originated 
there i'm not sure)
it is used by many non-gnome projects openssl and xorg are not 
gnome/gtk

-config files in general have been embraced by libraries in general 
long before
pkg-config came about, and it saves libraries from polluting the path 
with a ton of,
-config scripts and generally provides a better -config than software 
creating their own.

if we want a decent -config system, we're going to reimplement 
pkg-config...
on my system i have over 300 pkg-config enabled libraries... and i'm 
glad I don't have
300 foo-config scripts in my $PATH.

in fact theres libxml2, openssl, cairo, libpng, libxslt, audiofile, 
portaudio,
libart, freetype all possible gnustep dependencies from our howto page
all which have embraced pkg-config.

so out of the 16 potential deps listed there, more than half support 
pkg-config.

> But I suspect what you'd really want to discuss is how to compile 
> things 
> without
> using gnustep-make.  Which is a perfectly valid discussion, and in 
> that 
> context
> pkg-config might make sense.  If you want to build using the 
> autoconf/automake/pkg-config toolchain, then using pkg-config is an 
> interesting option.

No I believe that he is saying is that pkg-config can be a dependency 
for gnustep-make
and at runtime gnustep can read the .pc file directly. and avoid a 
runtime dependency
on pkg-config.

the patch I posted also only had a gnustep-make dependency on 
pkg-config but since it
kept gnustep.conf if you wanted to modify gnustep.conf you also had to 
modify gnustep.pc

> The most obvious option is provide a gnustep-config tool that will 
> output the 
> gcc flags
> for the various stages/types of compilation, and provide some basic 
> indication of where
> to install things, then you could at least compile and install tools 
> and 
> libraries without gnustep-make.  We could make it reasonably similar 
> to the 
> traditional xxx-config gnome/gtk
> tools if you think that would make it easier to use.  We can think 
> about that.

I think this would be a step in the right direction but everybody has 
already been down
that road and since then switched to pkg-config.