rawhide report: 20070912 changes

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Thu, 2007-09-13 at 09:25 -0600, Richi Plana wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-09-13 at 17:08 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > >  What would the
> > > alternative to pkgconfig .pc files then be?
> > Passing CFLAGS and LIBS from the command line, like with any other
> > package on this planet.
> 
> Where would dependent packages intending on developing with OSG 1 or 2
> get the values for CFLAGS and LIBS, then? The whole point to doing
> pkg-config is exactly so that developers wouldn't need to know where the
> providing packages files are located, what flags it requires and what
> libraries to link against.
Right, but upstream has decided otherwise.

>  Granted some can be guessed due to Fedora's
> layout restrictions, but wouldn't that be taking a step back in the
> evolutionary process of development? Ultimately, the installed package
> would know best what it requires and not dependent developers.
> 
> It was my impression that developers are moving towards pkg-config and
> not away. 
This impression is wrong. Some developers do, some don't. 

It's a tool devs can take or leave, it solves some issues, but it also
introduces new ones.

> Even gnome followed this process.
It is in particular the GNOME community who follows it, because
pkg-config has a gtk/glib/GNOME related past, while many other devel
communities don't.

>  At one point in time, all
> the options had to be supplied to the "configure" script. 
This still applies, this is what "packaging is about".

Ralf