Using Qt debug libraries without configure and qmake

[Malte Forkel <malte.forkel@berlin.de>]

Hi,

I need your advise on how to deal with the way Debian packages the debug
version of Qt libraries.

I'm trying to package an existing software that includes a small Qt
application. The software is not using autotools or qmake but fixed
Makefiles. Building the release version is accomplished by lines like
   CXXFLAGS += $(shell pkg-config --cflags QtCore)
   LIBS +=  $(shell pkg-config --libs QtCore)
Building the release version of the sofware works fine.

Alternatively, when building a debug version, the above lines are
replaced by
   CXXFLAGS += $(shell pkg-config --cflags QtCore_debug)
   LIBS +=  $(shell pkg-config --libs QtCore_debug)
Building the debug version fails with errors like
   Package QtCore_debug was not found in the pkg-config search path.
   Perhaps you should add the directory containing `QtCore_debug.pc'
   to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
   No package 'QtCore_debug' found

I have installed libqtcore4, libqt4-dev and libqt4-dbg in the build
environment. Looking at the files in these packages, I noticed that they
provide /usr/lib/libQtCore.so.4.4.3 and
/usr/lib/libQtCore.so.4.4.3.debug, but not
/usr/lib/libQtCore_debug.so.4.4.3. Also, there is
/usr/lib/pkgconfig/QtCore.pc, but no /usr/lib/pkgconfig/QtCore_debug.pc
(or /usr/lib/pkgconfig/QtCore.debug.pc). Debian seems to use its own way
of packaging the debug versions.

As far as I can tell after some looking around, this might be no problem
when using a configure and qmake. Unfortenatey, upstream does not.

What should I do to specify that the debug versions of the libraries are
used?

Thanks in advance,
Malte