Re: (ITS#5184) pkg-config file for libraries

[bj@sernet.de]

On 2014-06-17 at 12:36 -0700 Howard Chu sent off:
> If you're depending on some unknown OpenLDAP install to provide all
> of the features that your Samba package needs, you need more than
> luck. You need to know that it was built against a compatible
> Kerberos library, a sane Cyrus SASL version, and a working crypto
> library. The only way to know that is to build it yourself against
> valid packages, in which case, you don't need to go grubbing through
> the system looking for them.

many people are happy with their own installation of openldap or whatever
package. Also I know what we have to check for to have a sufficient ldap
implementation for our Samba builds, believe me :-)


> If you're depending on some OpenLDAP that was packaged by someone
> else, then you should be asking them to provide a pkg-config file
> for their package. Installation issues are strictly not our concern,
> we distribute source code. That should have already been clear from
> http://www.openldap.org/its/index.cgi/Archive.Build?id=5184 Followup

okay, I didn't explicitly write that I disagree. I disgree on that statement by
the way :-)

usually package maintainers don't write .pc files they install the .pc files
that the source code ships. We also ship .pc files for all of our libraries we
ship in Samba. "make install" puts in the right content.


> 1.
> 
> Even if we provided a .pc file, you still have to guess where *that*
> got installed - was it in /usr, or in /usr/local, or somewhere else?

to get the location of the pkg-config file is really the smallest pain.

> I've certainly never seen pkg-config as a standard component of AIX
> or Solaris.

What difference does it make here if pkg-config is a *standard* component or if it
has to be separately installed?

> 
> Is pkg-config even supported on AIX?

it is, google "pkg-config aix" shows you.

To have a pkg-config files is something openldap *benefits* from because it
ensures that people can build agains openldap without big trouble. I'm not sure
if you really see how much benefit openldap gets out of those trivial to
generate .pc files actually. If people are able to build against
mozldap because just because there is a simple .pc file which sets
the compile and link flags right, then mozldap might become their prefered
library in the future. It's up to you if you want to make it easy or hard for
people to use your software.

Cheers
Björn