[CMake] pkg-config file format versus CMake packages

[Lectem]

Hi,
I’ll start by saying that I love the fact we’re now talking about a common representation of packages !

➢ The reason I say this is that extending pkg-config seems like it would help adoption rather then creating a completely new format. There is already a good portion of open source projects that already support pkg-config, so tweaking them to support more complicated scenarios seems easier than converting everything to a new format.

I’m not very familiar with pkg-config (working more in the Windows world) so excuse me if I’m wrong.

>From what I remember it is very basic and relies on compiler flags being the same everywhere (ie gcc-like flags), and does not provide any information about things such as ABI, C-runtime Library used (arguably could be represented as a package ?). As far as I know, it assumes that the libraries are always compiled with the same compiler on the same system, hence has no knowledge of compatibility between compiler versions. 
As you mentionned, it currently relies on -l for both libraries and linker flags, which would need to be changed.

➢ so tweaking them to support more complicated scenarios seems easier than converting everything to a new format.

Wouldn’t that create more confusion ? I fear it’d end up as a python2 python3 issue, where both versions look alike but are incompatible.


Have a nice Week-end,
Lectem
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