pkgconfig under Windows ? Was: review FindBlueZ.cmake

[Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas]

On Saturday 01 October 2011, Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> On Wednesday 21 September 2011, Raphael Kubo da Costa wrote:
> > Michael Jansen <kde at michael-jansen.biz> writes:
> > > Not sure here. After a (short) talk to some kde windows guys i remember
> > > he said there is pkgconfig for windows but it is considered completly
> > > broken. I think thats why most modules do that magic. Do ignore it on
> > > windows even if there.
> > 
> > I've often times heard non-KDE people say pkgconfig used to be broken
> > but should work fine nowadays, so I'm a bit confused here. It'd be nice
> > if the kde-windows guys could provide more details on what's the current
> > state of pkgconfig for them.
> 
> Yes.
> Also, whenever I said somewhere that our cmake files must be able to find 
> stuff also without pkgconfig, people replied that nowadays it works just 
fine 
> under Windows.
> 
> So, Windows developers: what's the current state of pkg-config under Windows 
?
> Does it work ?

Yes

> Do you use it ?

Yes. For Qt, KDE and other project types as well.

> Does it work with mingw ?
> Does it work with MSVC ?

Yes, yes. An example of a CMake build system using extensively pkg-config in 
both Windows (MinGW and MSVC) and Linux is FluidSynth:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/fluidsynth/wiki/BuildingWithCMake

An argument to support using pkg-config for projects that already provide a 
.pc file can be the recent problems with PulseAudio 1.0 and the broken  
findpulseaudio.cmake

Another argument is that looks like KDE would be playing some sort of boycott 
against a freedesktop.org standard.

Regards,
Pedro