Re: --enable-pc-files and nonexistent $PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR

[Bernd Jendrissek]

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 3:49 PM, Thomas Dickey <address@hidden> wrote:
> Essentially what that's saying is that the configure script should
> install package files somewhere.  I say "somewhere", because there's
> no apparent way to ask the pkgconfig program where they should be.

$ pkg-config --variable pc_path pkg-config
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/x86_64-linux-gnu:/usr/local/share/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig/x86_64-linux-gnu:/usr/share/pkgconfig

I just had a look what a random other library or three and they all
just do this:

pkgconfigdir = $(libdir)/pkgconfig
PKGCONFIG_DATA = libfoo.pc

No fancy tricks for checking if $(libdir)/pkgconfig exists or not.

> The followup comment about $DESTDIR is moot, because it is not part
> of the configure-script's check.

I disagree about it being moot: it is indeed not part of a
configure-time check, and that's why the configure-time check for the
pkg-config libdir should not prevent installing the .pc files. How
would you get .pc files installed if you were cross-compiling and
specifying, say,
--with-pkg-config-libdir=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/pdp11-minix? That
directory won't exist on your --build machine, but it will exist on
the --host machine, and you do want .pc files installed there.