Bug 79032

Summary:	Unintuitive error message for missing .pc file
Product:	pkg-config	Reporter:	Bill Spitzak <spitzak>
Component:	src	Assignee:	pkg-config
Status:	RESOLVED MOVED	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium	CC:	peter.hutterer
Version:	unspecified	Keywords:	patch
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:
Attachments:	0001-If-a-package-can-t-be-found-print-the-search-path-to.patch

Description Bill Spitzak 2014-05-21 18:18:02 UTC

If a .pc file is missing, it prints an error saying "Perhaps you should add the directory containing 'foo.pc' to PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable".

In 100% of the cases I have encountered this is not what is wrong. In every one of them the solution is to add 'foo.pc' to a directory already existing in PKG_CONFIG_PATH or the built-in path (by installing the missing package).

A better message is:

'foo.pc' not found in $PKG_CONFIG_PATH or /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/share/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig

This should indicate that in the rare case of the file already existing that fixing the environment variable PKG_CONFIG_PATH will work. It also shows the search path, which is hard to find out otherwise.

Comment 1 Peter Hutterer 2014-05-21 23:09:17 UTC

Created attachment 99544 [details] [review]
0001-If-a-package-can-t-be-found-print-the-search-path-to.patch

Comment 2 GitLab Migration User 2018-08-25 12:53:25 UTC

-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to freedesktop.org's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pkg-config/pkg-config/issues/12.

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