Re: Should -dev packages providing .pc files depend on pkg-config?
* Hendrik Sattler
| Am Samstag 05 April 2008 schrieb Tollef Fog Heen:
| > Whoever develops software based on libbar will have to have a call to
| > pkg-config somewhere in their build process so they should depend on
| > pkg-config.
|
| _If_ they do. Please consider the possibility that an application
| developer links to libbar without using pkg-config. pkg-config is
| _not_ part of an API, it is only a tool that _can_ be used, not
| must.
That depends on the library you are linking against. I, as an library
author is free to say «the only supported way to use my gargleblaster
library is through the I_CAN_HAS_GARGELBLASTER autoconf macro» (which
then proceeds to set GARGLEBLASTER_CFLAGS and GARGLEBLASTER_LIBS by
using pkg-config). If I do that, pkg-config is effectively part of
the API.
| Putting pkg-config on Recommends of Suggests of every -dev packages
| that has a .pc file, you could as well put it into built-essential
| dependency.
Build-essential is for something else, and I hope you did not
interpret what I said (and which you removed from my quote above) as
disagreeing with that.
--
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are
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