Improving the way we select multilib packages for trees

[Tom Lane]

Bill Nottingham <notting at redhat.com> writes:
> Joe Orton (jorton at redhat.com) said: 
>> Nobody has come up with a feasible plan for dealing with 
>> %{_bindir}/foo-config scripts AFAIK.

> Port package to pkgconfig. Write foo-config script that calls pkg-config.

(1) How many upstream projects will take back changes to make their
foo-config scripts depend on pkgconfig?  I'm afraid this proposed
solution will mean we end up maintaining many local forks of foo-config.

(2) pkg-config isn't psychic either.  As near as I can tell from a quick
read of its man page, the only way it can solve the problem is if
rpmbuild sets PKG_CONFIG_PATH to select either 32- or 64-bit libraries.
While that's adequate for solving our own build problems, it doesn't
help for people doing ordinary source builds of library-using software;
from their point of view foo-config is still broken.  And this makes it
even less likely that any upstreams will take back the foo-config
changes, because the "solution" depends not only on pkgconfig but on a
worldview that says RPM is the only build environment that matters.

			regards, tom lane