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

[Maurício]

 >> 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.

The idea is to be usefull for building your own personal software.
Many (most?) users of numerical libraries have never written a
configure script. pkg-config files could make a distribution like
Debian more confortable for good scientists lacking programming
experience.

 > @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?).

Adopting pkg-config seemed to me more meaningfull in a
distribution development environment. Maybe, some day, a package
with lots of .pc files. But if you think there's a risk of people
actually publishing their software in a non portable way, of
course this should be avoided.

Thanks for your comments,
Maurício