The url refers to a patch to make pkglibdir be able to be a semicolon-separated string, so you can have a default search path and not just a default search dir. Note that the patch is made against the Debian package, so I'm not 100% everything it applies to the normal upstream sources.
2005-03-18 Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no> * main.c (main): Use add_search_dirs for both the compile-time defined pc_path and the run-time defined PKG_CONFIG_PATH. * pkg.h: Add prototype for add_search_dirs. * pkg.c (add_search_dirs): Add new function which takes a delimiter-separated list as input and add_search_dir's it. (package_init): Remove knowledge about which dirs should be initially added. Moved this to main.c(main) * ChangeLog: Add emacs variables to set the date to this ChangeLog's standard format * Makefile.am (INCLUDES): Pass PKG_CONFIG_PCPATH on to main.c * configure.in: Add --with-pc-path to define the default search path for .pc files. (Freedesktop #119, #648)
pkgconfig 0.16 has been released and contains a fix for this bug.
Fixed in 0.16
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