introducing a requirement for pkg-config, sometimes
Greg Troxel <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.network.unison.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
This message is basically about all systems that are POSIXish, meaning everything but Windows native builds. This message is not really relevant to those using unison via packaging systems or the CI artifacts. It does affect those building unison from sources, even if not attempting to modify the code, and is thus on users. Currently a PR is pending to use libinotify to make fsmonitor work on BSDs. That requires finding the library and the right CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS. The standard approach for that, often contained within systems like autoconf, is pkg-config, which uses control files that are part of each package to convey required flags to programs using that package. I am leaning to saying that for any library needed by unison which ought to be found via pkg-config, then the build system will simply use pkg-config, implying that if for some reason pkg-config is not present, the build will fail. I believe that for all build environments (other than native Windows), it is trivial to install pkg-config, as vast numbers of other builds need it, and a system that can't have pkg-config is basically unthinkable. And therefore, that it is better to impose a hard requirement on pkg-config than to have any complexity or alternative approaches. That said, it seems better for a build that would not even try to use pkg-config to succeed whether or not it is present. So far, due to the mostly-ocaml nature of unison, the only example might be libinotify on BSDs, if one is building fsmonitor (by explicit request or an implicit "build everything" target). If you build unison from source, pkg-config isn't already installed, and installing it would be difficult, please explain the situation. Otherwise I'll assume that "to build foo, you have to have pkg-config" is not a problem once documented in INSTALLING.md. Greg -- To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].