Re: gnustep-make experiment

[Matt Rice]

On 2007-02-10 11:48:55 -0800 Richard Frith-Macdonald 
<address@hidden> wrote:
> The current setup was particularly designed to 'play nice with the  
> rest of 
> the world'.
> You can't get much nicer than a file in a standard location which  
> both the 
> shell and makefiles can use.   A pkg-config file on the  other hand 
> does 
> *not* play nice with the reset of the world.   It  can't be used 
> except on 
> systems where pkg-config is installed or  where software is specially 
> written 
> to read it.
>
>
> It seems to me that GNUstep.conf and pkg-config have rather different 
> purposes.  GNUstep.conf is distinctly more universal/portable which  
> is 
> critical for its intended use of relocating software and  controlling 
> options.  On the other hand pkg-config metadata is  convenient for 
> getting 
> command line flags but no good when pkg-config  is not installed.  So 
> I like 
> pkg-config as an option for external  use, but not as a dependency... 
> I'm in 
> favor of gnustep-make storing  the info it needs redundantly so that 
> our 
> makefiles can run reliably  but people can use pkg-config externally.
>
> I often need to build gnustep-base and proprietory software which  
> uses it on 
> solaris (and sometimes windows) systems that I don't  own ... and the 
> fewer 
> packages I have to install to do it, the better.

The 'dependency' on pkg-config is exagerated actually... if pkg-config 
is not installed
as i somewhere in this thread suggested

GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES ?= $(shell pkg-config --variable=makefiles)
include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/common.make

you could just set GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES and be done with it.

that line is functionally equivalent to
ifeq ($(origin GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES), undefined
  GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES = $(shell pkg-config --variable=makefiles)
endif

and if you tried to ./configure something which required the gnustep 
pkg-config support
you'd get an error that pkg-config wasn't found in the configure.log

this was so that new makefiles could work with old gnustep-make 
versions
but is equally usable with new gnustep-makes without pkg-config.