Re: [boost] [boost.build] RFE: pkg-config

From: Stefan Seefeld (seefeld_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-06-15 10:09:48

Vladimir Prus wrote:

>>Again, I'm thinking of platforms such as Fedora or Debian, which both have
>>their own package management tools. If I want to develop software that
>>is to use boost rpm or deb packages, I'd much appreciate some
>>standardization of how to query the boost package(s) about required flags.
>>If this isn't done as part of the boost project itself, packagers will do
>>it, but probably not in a consistent way.
> 
> 
> If this is done by Boost.Build, it's required the all packages use
> Boost.Build too. If they build boost in some other way, then there's
> nothing we can do.

Indeed. The point is really to make it *possible* for them to do it
without boost developers having to care.
If packagers build boost with bjam, but then rename libraries manually,
they need to manually adjust the table. Still the whole process is transparent
to users, as they would still look up library names in the same table.

> Looking at 'man pkgconfig' I see the the .pc file are required to contain 
> only linker flags and compiler flags. I think that information can be easily
> generated by Boost.Build V2 -- because the only variable part is the
> installation location and the name of the library.
> 
> Actually, why don't just provide static .pc files? On Unix, gcc is the
> standard compiler, so libboost_filesystem_gcc.so should work ;-)

:-)

Let's take a concrete example:

I want to use boost.wave, so I'm looking for a 'boost_wave.pc' file.

`pkgconfig --libs boost_wave`

should report something like '-lboost_wave -lboost_program_options -lboost_filesystem'
on my FC box, but when using boost from CVS installed in /usr/local, the same command
may report:

'-L/usr/local/lib -lboost_wave-gcc-1_33 -lboost_program_options-gcc-1_33 -lboost_filesystem-gcc-1_33'

You get the idea...

Thanks,
                Stefan