Re: lua.pc pkg-config file

[taylanbayirli@... (Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer)]

Tom N Harris <telliamed@whoopdedo.org> writes:

> On Monday, March 23, 2015 11:13:24 AM Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı /Kammer wrote:
>
>> Hi, I'm a GNU Guix packager and have been bitten a few times by Lua
>> upstream providing no lua.pc file and yet many programs relying on it
>> because some popular distributions have a patch in their Lua package
>> to provide the missing .pc file.  It would be nice to fix the problem
>> at its root by making Lua provide a .pc file itself.
>
> Your suggestion also falls into the trap of assuming there is only one
> "Lua" on a system. There is not and it is dangerous to use "-llua"
> without a version.

How about providing one .pc file per version, so pkg-config can be
called with "lua-5.1" and "lua-5.2" and such?  So Lua X.Y installs:

$prefix/lib/lua/X.Y/liblua.a
$prefix/lib/pkgconfig/lua-X.Y.pc

and "pkg-config --libs lua-X.Y" returns the appropriate -L flag.


There could also be a make directive to install a plain lua.pc file
which will point to the version at hand.  So running "make install-pc"
from the build directory of Lua X.Y will install/overwrite:

$prefix/lib/pkgconfig/lua.pc

after which "pkg-config --libs lua" returns the -L flag for Lua X.Y.


If programs are expected to always link against explicit Lua versions,
since you say -llua without a version is dangerous, then scrap the last
idea, and the former is clearly the right way to go I think.

Taylan