513617 - Is pkg-config actually needed on Windows?

Status: NEW

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect)

Description

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

I am (successfully) building on Windows 2000, yet I get
{
checking for pkg-config... no
*** The pkg-config script could not be found. Make sure it is
*** in your path, or set the PKG_CONFIG environment variable
*** to the full path to pkg-config.
*** Or see http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig to get pkg-config.
*** The pkg-config script could not be found. Make sure it is
*** in your path, or set the PKG_CONFIG environment variable
*** to the full path to pkg-config.
*** Or see http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig to get pkg-config.
}

1- Url is wrong/obsolete. Current one seems to be
"http://pkg-config.freedesktop.org/wiki/"

2- If the program is needed, (online documentation and/or) MozillaBuild should probably include it and the check should be an error not a warning.
If it's not needed (as I would guess), the check should be skipped.

Comment 1

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

It's not needed on standard Windows builds. pkg-config helps you find include paths and linker commands for various system libraries. That's not necessary on Windows builds. I'm not sure if it's necessary on a mingw build, or some theoretical mingw+gtk Windows build.

Comment 2

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Attachment: (Av1) Update url

Comment 3

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

3- The other odd behavior is that it looks like this file is run twice in a row: double message...

Comment 4

[:Mook]

It's not needed for mingw builds either (there, you just set CXX and friends and pray).  I don't know what a mingw+gtk build would be like, though.  (I wasn't aware until just now that gtk actually ships .pc files, but they do.  Though you'd need to edit them manually to not say prefix=c:/devel/target/8d7cadcb5dab920f3597c150159ff1fc ...)

Comment 5

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Comment on attachment 397623 [details] [diff] [review]
(Av1) Update url

This doesn't seem worthwhile. pkg.m4 is a file we get from some upstream repository. You're welcome to track down a newer copy as long as it doesn't break with autoconf 2.13. Otherwise, we should figure out a way to get rid of the warning when targeting Win32 etc.

Comment 6

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

(In reply to comment #5)

> pkg.m4 is a file we get from some upstream repository.

Ah, I didn't know.
This file is part of pkg-config which can be downloaded from
http://pkgconfig.freedesktop.org/releases/

> You're welcome to track down a newer copy as long as it doesn't
> break with autoconf 2.13.

The file we have in-tree:
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvslog.cgi?file=mozilla/build/autoconf/pkg.m4&rev=HEAD
(Not updated since switch to hg.)

> Otherwise, we should figure out a way to get rid of
> the warning when targeting Win32 etc.

Ftr,
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Build_Documentation#Build_prerequisites
{
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Linux_Build_Prerequisites

pkg-config 0.9.0 (or higher)
autoconf-2.13 (requires GNU m4) - Autoconf 2.5x will not work. See bug 104642 for details.
}

Comment 8

[dccitaliano]

FWIW, strawberry perl provides a perl module called `pkg-config` and that gets exported to the PATH (and servo build fails on windows because it picks the wrong "pkg-config").

Comment 9

[dccitaliano]

https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/15554