Philip Brown writes: > "pkg-config is a script to make putting together all the build > flags when compiling/linking a lot easier. " > Sounds a whole like like autoconf to me. Umm, no. Autoconf produces a configure script, using large amounts of m4 code and whatnot. pkg-config only combines static information from a couple of (small) files and outputs one line of text. They do *not* do the same thing, not by a long shot. The configure.in file that autoconf reads can contain calls to pkg-config (or, more correctly, m4 macro calls that expand to shell code that calls pkg-config). (Yes, one could write configure scripts (or, configure.in files, or m4 macros used in such) without using pkg-config. However, using pkg-config makes the configure.in files *less* complex.) (I am not saying that autoconf, pkg-config, libtool etc form an ideal solution. It can be very hard to understand what is going on. They are coded in shell, m4 and Perl. Perhaps it would be better to combine them *all*, including make, into one tool, written in one language. Or maybe not. But until something better comes along, and authors adopt it, no use whining.) --tml
