[CMake] [RFC] How to use pkg-config under Windows (... and OSX)?

[Patrick Spendrin]

Am 18.11.2011 02:02, schrieb Alan W. Irwin:
> Alex, is it possible your KDE Windows developers who are objecting to
> pkg-config tried a version from years ago when it did not have all
> these Windows issues sorted out? I suggest you tell them to
> investigate again using modern pkg-config.  For example, they could
> follow the experiment I tried using the all-in-one GTK+ 2.22.1 bundle
> you can download from http://www.gtk.org/download/win32.php.  If that
> works (which it should do if the bundle is properly installed) or if
> they use a modern binary version of pkg-config for Windows from that
> same location, ask them to attempt to find any Windows binary package
> that is broken with regard to pkg-config. There might be some of
> those.  But I very much doubt that is a systematic problem since it is
> so straightforward (install the *.pc files in the correct relative
> location in the install tree) to deal with the pkg-config Windows
> issue the KDE Windows developers have been so concerned about.
> 

First I want to explain our setup again a bit more:
KDE on Windows is built using two compilers, gcc from the mingw-w64
project (both 32bit and 64bit) and the no-charge Microsoft compiler
(Visual Studio Express Edition). Since there are problems with the
compatibility of C++ libraries and for easier debugging, we build all
depend packages ourselves with each compiler (so there are multiple
packages even for C libraries). For that, we sometimes add heavy patches
to those libraries (adaptions to the regular Unix layout for all
compilers even for msvc built libraries e.g.). These patches normally
don't add a missing .pc file.

One of the other problems still persists - pkg-config is not needed for
those packages now (think of standard build libz which also installs a
.pc file). So for us the question is of course whether there is a real
need to add an additional thing to the build system.

I will try to check with newer builds of pkg-config this weekend though.
One other question: Do you know whether static builds (non-dll) of
pkg-config are available somewhere?

regards,
Patrick