pkg-config vs. Cross Compile and Multi-arch
One of the areas where pkg-config can cause some problems is when trying to cross compile some code, or when working with multi-arch systems (such as bi-arch AMD64 Linux distros). While it is possible to use pkg-config in such systems by manipulating $PKG_CONFIG_PATH and/or $PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR, users can’t just follow the instructions given for the single-arch case.
After some discussion with Wolfgang Wieser, we came up with a proposal for better supporting cross-compile and multi-arch uses. The main changes would be:
- Add a new --host option pkg-config. This would allow pkg-config to use different default search paths based on the host type, and search for .pc files in host type specific subdirs on the search path.
- If an unknown host type is given, then no default search path is disabled altogether.
- The autoconf macro would pass this argument whenever it detected that pkg-config supported it.
For the common case, this should allow most packages to be built for the non default architecture on a bi-arch system, or cross compiled, by just passing --host=foo to configure and (you might still need to set $CC or $CFLAGS, depending on the compiler setup).
For packages that install .pc files, they should continue to work. However it will be worth updating them to install their .pc file into a host type specific sub directory (the autoconf macros will make this easy to do).
If this code is likely to affect you, send comments to the pkg-config mailing list (or leave comments here).