Question wrt KDE not depending on pkg-config (was Re: Initial support for kde_projects.xml in kdesrc-build)

[Raphael Kubo da Costa]

Alexander Neundorf <neundorf at kde.org> writes:

> On Wednesday 02 February 2011, Michael Pyne wrote:
> ...
>> e.g. worrying about environment variables like PKG_CONFIG_PATH is no idle
>> claim (kdesrc-build sets that as well), along with PATH in order to pick up
>> the right Qt version.
>
> Please try to use only CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH instead of setting PATH. I recommend 
> this to everybody.
> I'd also suggest not to set PKG_CONFIG_PATH, at least not to directories where 
> KDE stuff is installed, this has to be found also without pkgconfig.

Sorry for deviating from the original purpose of the discussion (thus
moving this to kde-buildsystem@).

I question I've had for some time is why KDE's cmake files should not
depend on pkg-config -- AFAIR, support for it on Windows used not to be
good, but I've been told things have improved. Are there any other
historical reasons for that?

I'm not even proposing changes to this policy, I'd just like to know the
reasons for its existence (at work, for example, if we start working on
a new project and use CMake, I tend, out of habit, to not rely on
pkg-config, whereas colleagues usually go the other way and just rely on
finding stuff with pkg-config and save a few lines of code).