Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: prune_libtool_files() and pkg-config dependency

[Michał Górny]

On Fri, 31 Aug 2012 15:31:43 -0400
Alexis Ballier <aballier@g.o> wrote:

> On Fri, 31 Aug 2012 18:03:33 +0200
> Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:05:23 -0400
> > Ian Stakenvicius <axs@g.o> wrote:
> >
> > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > > Hash: SHA256
> > >
> > > On 31/08/12 10:56 AM, Alexis Ballier wrote:
> > > > Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >> I believe that the more important direction here is to make
> > > >> development *easier*, not harder. Adding the same DEPENDs over
> > > >> and over again to every single package is at least frustrating.
> > > >> Similarly frustrating would be if those 'reduced systems' had
> > > >> to rebuild gcc every time they wanted to compile something...
> > > >> oh wait, they would have to bootstrap it every time.
> > > >>
> > > >
> > > > you would achieve it better by adding pkgconfig to DEPEND in
> > > > eutils.eclass than putting it in @system since in the latter
> > > > case it would also be a RDEPEND of everything basically
> > > >
> > >
> > > And realistically that's where the DEPEND should be anyways, IMO
> > > -- appended by the eclass where the function is that uses it.  If
> > > this means prune_libtool_files() gets separated out of eutils and
> > > put in its own eclass (so that all the eutils inheritors don't
> > > suddenly need virtual/pkgconfig unnecessarily), then so be it.
> >
> > I wasn't referring to the function at the moment but at the overall
> > fact that practically any C/C++ package depending on any
> > non-standard library practically should depend on pkg-config. A
> > library not providing pkg-config file is simply broken.
> >
>
> Hu? You know, some people think pkgconfig is a poorman's workaround
> for a different problem. You don't need .pc files for dynamic linking
> because:
> 1) there is a standard include search path
> 2) there is a standard library path
> 3) elf shared objects support dependencies
>
> You might need pkgconfig for static linking because static archives do
> not support 3). Isn't it the thing that should be improved instead ?
>
> Alike you claim a library not providing a .pc is broken, I can claim
> that a library relying on it is broken because it is violating 1)
> and/or 2) which are well established unix behavior.

I'm not sure if you're aware of it but Gentoo doesn't aim at supporting
solely Linux and no other system.

Also, please tell me how to handle multiple slots sanely without
pkg-config in a package like Boost, for example.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny