pkgconf

package compiler and linker metadata toolkit

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William Pitcock 5869405054 parse: add support for parsing versions		2011-07-26 19:38:26 -05:00
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README

pkgconf - compiler and linker configuration for development frameworks
----------------------------------------------------------------------

1. General summary.

pkgconf is a program which helps to configure compiler and linker flags for
development frameworks.  It is similar to pkg-config, but was written from
scratch in Summer of 2011 to replace pkg-config, which now needs itself to
build itself (or you can set a bunch of environment variables, both are
pretty ugly.)

Implementations of pkg-config, such as pkgconf are typically used with the
PKG_CHECK_MODULES autoconf macro.  As far as I (nenolod) know, pkgconf is
compatible with all known variations of this macro.  However, I have not
extensively tested yet for compatibility.  pkgconf detects at runtime
whether or not it was started as 'pkg-config', and if so, attempts to set
program options in a way where it's behaviour should be similar.

In terms of the autoconf macro, it is possible to specify the PKG_CONFIG
environment variable, so that you can test pkgconf without overwriting your
pkg-config binary.  (hint: export PKG_CONFIG=/usr/bin/pkgconf)  However,
if you do this, it will be running in native mode, so you may have some very
strange results as the dependency graph is compiled differently in native
mode.

2. Technical design.

pkgconf builds an acyclic directed dependency graph.  This allows for the user
to more conservatively link their binaries -- which may be helpful in some 
environments, such as when prelink(1) is being used.  As a result of building
a directed dependency graph designed for the specific problem domain provided
by the user, more accurate dependencies can be determined.  pkg-config, on the
other hand builds a database of all known pkg-config files on the system before
attempting to resolve dependencies, which is a considerably slower and less
efficient design.

pkgconf also does not provide support for pointlessly stupid features implemented
in pkg-config.  If you think a feature is not dumb, then you should file an
'Improvement' task on Atheme's JIRA instance at <http://jira.atheme.org>.

3. Compiling.

pkgconf is basically compiled the same way any other Atheme project is compiled:

   $ ./configure
   $ make
   $ sudo make install

4. Reporting bugs.

Please report bugs to <http://jira.atheme.org>.