What is the name of the pkg-config package?
Lassi Kortela
lassi at lassi.io
Fri Jun 26 14:05:12 PDT 2020
>>> I don't know what name DragonFly uses for pkg-config.
>>
>> Using google to search "freebsd pkg-config" gave several sites saying
>> the *bsd package is called pkgconf
>
> Maybe the pkg program can provide an alias for 'pkg-config' and
> 'pkgconfig' to 'pkgconf'. Or maybe pkg can provide a suggestion for
> the correct package name?
The pkg-config situation off the top of my head, possibly with mistakes:
- The original pkg-config was written in Perl and originated in GNOME.
- pkgconf is a compatible rewrite in C, originated in one of the BSDs.
- pkgconf also provides the "pkg-config" command as an alias.
- pkgconf is installable from *BSD ports, and is in the OpenBSD base system.
- 'pkg config' in DragonFly is a completely different command whose name
is similar by coincidence.
- 'man pkg-config' usually brings up the manual page for the pkg-config
command, but in DragonFly the manpage for 'pkg config' subcommand is
named 'pkg-config(8)' so that manpage is called up instead.
A pkg-config implementation is sufficiently simple and generally useful
that having it in the base system might be a good idea.
As a separate but related suggestion, it could also make sense to ship
.pc definition files for the base system libraries in /usr/lib. There's
already a directory for such files, /usr/libdata/pkgconfig, but so far
it only covers libusb and zlib.
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