Re: why is gtk install so difficult?

[Paul Davis <paul linuxaudiosystems com>]

>At Tue, Oct 14, 2003 at 11:47:12PM -0600, Michael Torrie wrote:
>> All the compilation problems I've seen lately on this list stem from
>> users not understanding what happens when you  install to /usr/local and
>> try to use pkg-config without telling it to look for your .pc files in
>> /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig (it defaults to /usr/lib/pkgconfig).
>
>That suggests pkg-config needs ${PREFIX}/lib/pkgconfig included in its
>default path. It's not user error if a piece of software doesn't pay
>attention to where it installed itself (or was asked to install itself).

that's not what is happening in such situations. linux (and unix in
general) has been plagued by two different installation
conventions. "system installs" go into /usr, "user installs" go into
/usr/local. with the dawn of package systems like RPM, deb etc., most
of them default to an install in /usr. if the user then installs
something from a source tarball, it normally ends up in
/usr/local. this is modelled on some old ideas about backups, system
reinstalls and so forth that often no longer apply.

now, tools whose work it is to decide if something is installed or not
(like pkg-config) have to know where to look, and by default they
follow the way the *they* were installed. if pkg-config was installed
under /usr, then it only looks in /usr/lib/pkg-config *UNLESS* you
tell it do otherwise. likewise, if it was installed under /usr/local,
then it only looks in /usr/local/lib/pkg-config *UNLESS* you tell it
to do otherwise.

i happen to think that this is a stupid decision, and that pkg-config
should, by default, search both /usr/lib/pkg-config and
/usr/local/pkg-config. but it doesn't, and so if you (a user) are
going to install stuff from both packages and source tarballs, then
its REQUIRED that you set PKG_CONFIG_PATH to let pkg-config know where
to search.

--p