[Pkg-scicomp-devel] Pkg-config and numerical libraries

[Daniel Leidert]

Maurício wrote:

>>> Do you think it could be possible to add pkg-config .pc files
>>> to numerical libraries in debian? I was going to write one for
>>> lapack and submit as a sugestion for lapack package maintainer
> 
>> As Lapack maintainer, I won't mind adding it.
[..]
>>>  but then I thought: what if it were made standard for all
>>> numerical libraries to have proper pkg-config configuration?
> 
>> Well, if you are developing only for Debian/Ubuntu, sure. But as
>> a software developer, usually, you need to think global (...)
> 
> That's what I would like. I will try, at least, to get all
> libraries I see bindings to in Haskell to have pkg-config files in
> main distributions and, if possible, upstream.

Sorry, but this is a rather stupid plan. You don't have any guranatee,
that these files will be maintained, adjusted or even be in sync.
Relying on such files further means, that your own software will not
build on most systems.

> But I think it's
> easier to discuss this in distribution specific places first,
> as people are more concerned about "dependency management" issues.
> 
> In the future, I believe it could be a good policy for all
> distributions to have .pc files for all development library
> packages.

Nope. For what? Such files are useless if they are not shipped by
upstream. Nobody of us will begin to patch *working* configure
scripts to use self-written pkg-config files. Also software authors
cannot rely on them. So even if they use them, they must also
also provide an alternative search path (AC_SEARCH_LIB, ...) and so
they double the size of the code. I erally cannot see any advantage of
having such files shipped by Debian (or distributions generally) only.
Such files must be shipped by upstream.

@Sylvestre: I would recommend to forward the file upstream and let
them include it or not. It will create more trouble if we begin to
ship such self-written files and people begin to rely on them (just
because they think, upstream ships them - or how do you want to tell
them that these files are only available from Debian?).

Regards, Daniel
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