Talk:pkg-config

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There's some noise about pkg-config `concept' beeing broken see this post and this one from Wine's project leader.

I didn't find details over this brokeness statement. Potorange (talk) 14:17, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The first link is not relevant (the cause in the erroneously specification of a library or of its usage), the second link does not give any rational. --Hibou57 (talk) 04:12, 15 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A standard or a software?

To my understanding, `pkg-config` is more a standard than a software, and Freedesktop is indeed about standards, although it's doing the same error (to my eyes) as Wikipedia, referring to it as a software instead of as a standard. If `pkg-config` is not at least also a standard and just software, then how its behaviour specified? Another point of view, is that if I'm not wrong, there use to be applications like Code::Blocks, reading and interpreting `*.pc` files without relying on the legacy `pkg-config` application. --Hibou57 (talk) 04:18, 15 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The new kid on the block is `pkgconf` which can be used as a drop-in replacement for `pkg-config` using a symlink. It also provides a library, `libpkgconf` that provides access to most of `pkgconf`s functionality. Ebichu63 (talk) 10:04, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is a tool called pkg-config. It has been re-written a few times. And there are tools with somewhat different names that seem to do same/similar thing. IDK whether they use the same .pc info or similar info or completely different info. I suspect that there is no standard for the info, but maybe there is a de-facto standard. It seems to me that the data is the more standard aspect; more so than the tool used to access it. But, IDK of a term that identifies the data; the .pc files. This article seems to be about the specific tool called pkg-config, and it covers the database (.pc files) and other similar tools. Stevebroshar (talk) 13:30, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Using pkg-config on platforms other than Linux

I am by no means an expert on this topic, but I was doing some related research I found a comment saying something to the effect of "gcc test.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs glib-2.0`" doesn't work on some non-linux machines, and you should use the format gcc `pkg-config --cflags glib-2.0` test.c `pkg-config --libs glib-2.0` instead". I'm not sure if this is right in all cases, but it might be something to mention. See MajorTechBoy (talk) 04:32, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

IMO a bit too down in the weeds. WP need not train people how to use pkg-config. Stevebroshar (talk) 13:21, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

History

It would be nice to see a bit more about the history. I like pkg-config and I have noticed that it actually solves problems that "--version" invocations do not solve (e. g. dissimilar results again, based on different authors). So I wondered how to suggest to more people to add .pc files, and for this it would be interesting to see the history. I see that it was released in 2000 but I don't know more than that. Would be nice if wikipedia could gather more facts here, as an intro to it. 2A02:8388:1641:8380:3AD5:47FF:FE18:CC7F (talk) 11:13, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, wikipedia doesn't write content (gather facts) ;) Contributors do. And, as often happens in a business meeting when someone makes a suggestion for the team, that person (you!) is a good candidate to do the work :) Stevebroshar (talk) 14:50, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]