Bug 8836

Summary: Add minimum pkg-config version field to .pc files
Product: pkg-config Reporter: Tom Parker <freedesktop>
Component: srcAssignee: Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen>
Status: RESOLVED INVALID QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: high    
Version: unspecified   
Hardware: x86 (IA32)   
OS: Windows (All)   
Whiteboard:
i915 platform: i915 features:
Attachments: Patch to implement this feature

Description Tom Parker 2006-10-30 12:12:22 UTC 
.pc files should have a "pkgconfig-min-version" field (the name needs a bit of
work). For example, .pc files with .private fields need pkg-config with a
minimum version of 0.18, and having a check in individual .pc files as opposed
to making maintainers of programs guess what the minimum version required by
every single one of their dependancies (and their dependancies, and so on)
sounds like a much better idea to me.

Attempting to get flags from files with pkgconfig-min-version fields should
cause pkg-config to break similarly to lack of a dependancy (although with a bit
more information). For backwards compatability, .pc files should not have to
have this field, but its use should be encouraged for programs using newer
features of pkg-config.
Comment 1 Tom Parker 2006-10-30 14:51:11 UTC 
Created attachment 7601 [details] [review]
Patch to implement this feature

pkgconfig-min-version became pkgconfig_min_version to avoid additional changes
to the parser, but the feature is otherwise implemented. Uses the existing
version comparator.
Comment 2 Tollef Fog Heen 2006-10-31 08:24:13 UTC 
You mean similar to:

: tfheen@xoog /usr/lib/pkgconfig > pkg-config --libs blah
Package 'test thingabob' requires 'pkg-config >= 2.0' but version of pkg-config
is 0.20
You may find new versions of pkg-config at
http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig/
: tfheen@xoog /usr/lib/pkgconfig > cat blah.pc
prefix=/usr
exec_prefix=${prefix}
libdir=${exec_prefix}/lib
includedir=${prefix}/include

Name: test thingabob
Description: test
Version: 2.1.10
Requires: pkg-config >= 2.0
Cflags: -I${includedir}
Libs: -L${libdir} -lXft
Libs.private: -lX11
: tfheen@xoog /usr/lib/pkgconfig >

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