Qt static libraries - pkgconfig again

[Ralf Habacker]

Holger Schröder schrieb:
> On Friday 23 February 2007 23:18:04 Christian Ehrlicher wrote:
>   
>> Holger Schröder schrieb:
>>     
>>> On Friday 23 February 2007 21:38:56 Thiago Macieira wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Simon Hausmann wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>> Christian is right there, also because qmake does not generate
>>>>> pkg-config files on Windows.
>>>>>           
>>>> May I suggest then that we together standardise on a dependency file for
>>>> static libraries (and platforms where such a thing is necessary)? More
>>>> or less like the libtool .la file.
>>>>
>>>> CMake will need it anyways for supporting static builds of other
>>>> applications.
>>>>         
>>> well, pkg-config is available on win32, at least that is what
>>> http://pkgconfig.freedesktop.org/wiki/ says, although i haven´t tested it
>>> yet.
>>>
>>> so what about this option: for qt 4.2 we leave things as they are, and
>>> for qt 4.3 the trolls install .pc files on windows too, and we use them
>>> under linux and under windows ?
>>>       
>> pkg-config is available on win32, but it's only used in msys environment
>> (where you have a linux-like directory layout) -> the location of the pc
>> files is not defined on windows. A path can be added with
>> PKG_CONFIG_PATH (afaik), but imho this just makes the whole kde
>> compilation more complex than we gain advantages from using pkg-config
>> on win32.
>>
>>     
> perhaps we should keep the future in mind. i think it would be good, if we 
> agree on a directory layout for the installation of kde on windows under a 
> prefix. 
This is already defined by the installation structure of kde, gnuwin32,
dbus and other packages. If you install the sample kdelibs-mingw and all
required dependencies with the kde installer you get the following
directory layout under the install prefix
 contrib
 data
 doc
 etc
 include
 lib
 man
 manifest
 mkspecs
 plugins
 share
 src
 tools
 translations
> but the user should be able to unpack the kde package into any 
> directory on the windows machine and have a working installation. 
agreed
> and right 
> now there are still some limitations in kde, which make this impossible, like 
> the paths in kde4-config are hardcoded.
>   
Which has to be changed for windows as already done with dbus.  The
dbus-daemon detects the installation base using the executable path.

> perhaps pkg-config could help us there too.
>
>   
There would be a way to save pc files into a package installation dir
like <prefix>/pkg-config so that cmake is able to detect those files. If
have seen that some gnuwin32 provides .pc files, but I don't remember
where they store it.
The most annoying problem with pkg-config is that is uses absolute
include/library path and only supports gcc on windows.
It has to be extend to support multiple compilers (how to detect the
currently used compiler) and include/library path depending on
installation path at runtime.

Sometime ago I have written an initial version of a pkg-config for
windbus.
http://windbus.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/windbus/trunk/pkg-config/
Maybe this could be used as a starting point for a better implementation.

Ralf