Re: [bug-libunistring] pkg-config support, please

[Tim Ruehsen]

On Thursday 22 January 2015 12:10:39 Daiki Ueno wrote:
> Tim Ruehsen <address@hidden> writes:
> > there has been a request (incl. patch) in May 06, 2014 from Chris
> > Morrison.
> > 
> > What about it ? Is there something missing ?
> > 
> > I would really like to see pkg-config support for libunistring (as project
> > author and maintainer). And it is so easy to add :-)
> 
> I'm aware of it (and not opposed to it), but there are also criticisms
> on pkg-config, for example:
> http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-devel/2014-May/028473.html
> I'm not sure if there was any consensus about it.

Hi Daiki,

Despite the criticisms, you simply give project maintainers an *option* to use 
pkg-config. When you add the patch, nothing changes to existing projects. And 
project maintainers who use libunistring can simply decide if they want to use 
pkg-config or not.
Nothing changes for project libunistring maintainers. See it as an extended 
service for people who use libunistring.

I read the above conversation. Werner Koch's arguments against pkg-config 
sound more like a dictate to project maintainers. The direction of his 
arguments are simply false. He should not dictate other people what they 
should like and what not. It better to offer choices and let people decide 
what's good for them on their own (except they ask for advice).

We introduced pkg-config to Wget a while ago because distribution maintainers 
asked for it. They said, it would make their life much easier.

Yesterday I had a (private) conversation with Dagobert Michelsen, who is 
strongly involved in building packages for Solaris (https://www.opencsw.org).
He had problems with configuring different versions of libicu to link with a 
library project of mine (libpsl). I offered him to add pkg-config support into 
configure.ac. He said "That would immediately solve my problem". So I did - 
and his problem was solved.

> By the way, for your use-case, perhaps libunistring.m4 in Gnulib might
> help.  It looks self-contained and you could just copy it into the m4
> directory and call gl_LIBUNISTRING from configure.ac:
> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/tree/m4/libunistring.m4

Thank you to point this out.
Of course I would like to offer a consistent way to change library and include 
paths for all libraries that my project uses. How can I explain that changing 
these for libunistring is completely different than for other libraries (that 
support pkg-config) ?
I already heard voice saying "it doesn't provide *pc files ? Arg, isn't there 
an alternative ?". And that drops into my mind from time to time as well.

Please give libunistring users the *choice* and don't choose for them by not 
supporting pkg-config.

Regards, Tim

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