pkgconfig under Windows ? Was: review FindBlueZ.cmake

[Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas]

On Tuesday 18 October 2011, Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> On Saturday 01 October 2011, Patrick Spendrin wrote:
> > Am 01.10.2011 21:33, schrieb Alexander Neundorf:
> > > 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 ?
> > 
> > Well, it runs.
> > 
> > > Do you use it ?
> > 
> > Not in a sense where I want to.
> > 
> > > Does it work with mingw ?
> > > Does it work with MSVC ?
> > 
> > The issue with pkgconfig and also the point why we don't use it is the
> > following: pkgconfig uses .pc files to find out about the layout of a
> > library. This means that e.g. the installation path is hardcoded into
> > that file, which makes sense as long as you don't send around packages
> > containing these files: on a different system those paths will not have
> > any meaning, so it is completely useless to put those paths in there. So
> > what to do? One could argue to add an option to pkgconfig to replace
> > those paths, which is not the best idea either - also it would involve
> > somebody (in the end: me) hacking on pkgconfig.
> > 
> > To conclude:
> > At the moment it doesn't make sense to use pkgconfig for us on Windows -
> > we only gain more work load from it. It might make sense for really
> > small projects or corner cases to use pkgconfig (e.g. if you'd need to
> > rewrite the buildsystem for glib otherwise), but for us, it has only
> > disadvantages.
> 
> So, I'm not sure what the conclusion is.
> It sounds like the find-modules have to find the stuff successfully also 
> without pkg-config under Windows.
> And if this is a requirement, then I ask myself, if the find-modules have to 
> be written in a way that they work without pkg-config just as good as with 
> pkg-config, then why do we need the pkg-config stuff in them at all, I mean 
> e.g. under Linux ?
> 
> Alex

On the other hand, I have the impression that you simply made a rhetoric 
question, that you have taken your decision beforehand, and you only want to 
listen a confirmation of your own opinion, dismissing and silencing the 
dissenting voice.

Pedro