Re: By the way...

[Charles Wilson <cwilson at ece dot gatech dot edu>]

Steven O'Brien wrote:
 >> 1) pkgconfig.  I'm the cygwin pkgconfig maintainer, and I'd like
 >
 > I'll add that to the list of jobs ... When I started work on
 > gnome-vfs pkg-config was not in the "official" cygwin distribution
 > and 0.8.0 was the latest version. I patched it to remove the
 > included glib, so that it uses my glib port. When pkgconfig was
 > added to cygwin I tried it, but gnome-vfs would not build, so I
 > just ignored it. My focus was, and still is, on gnome so doing more
 >  work on pkgconfig was of no interest. But I'll certainly try the
 > new one.

What was the rationale for removing the included glib?  It was put into 
pkgconfig in order to break the recursive dependence: glib requires 
pkgconfig which requires glib which ...

Granted, the version of glib included in pkgconfig is old (but it's 
capable enough for what pkgconfig needs) and has a one-line bug when 
compiling on cygwin; I just patch that and move on...

Anyway, if your version of pkgconfig (0.8.0 + local glib) compiled 
gnome-vfs (on a particular date), yet the "official" cygwin version of 
pkgconfig (0.10.0) failed to do so:

I would think the problem is either:
   something broke in the real pkgconfig sources between 0.8.0 and 0.10.0
or
   gnome-vfs (on the particular date) was either exploiting a bug in 
pkgconfig-0.8.0, or was otherwise broken.

I don't think the answer is to use (and recommend) that cygwinners who 
want gnome use a old version of pkgconfig with a circular dependency...

Thanks for offering to try with "real" pkgconfig-0.12.0.  You'll 
probably need to apply this patch (if you keep the included static glib):

--- pkgconfig-0.10.0-orig/glib-1.2.8/gstrfuncs.c        Mon Apr 17 
11:05:16 2000
+++ pkgconfig-0.10.0/glib-1.2.8/gstrfuncs.c     Sat Feb 23 01:38:15 2002
@@ -671,7 +671,7 @@
    char *msg;

  #ifdef HAVE_STRSIGNAL
-  extern char *strsignal (int sig);
+  extern const char *strsignal (int sig);
    return strsignal (signum);
  #elif NO_SYS_SIGLIST
    switch (signum)

I look forward to seeing the results of your experiment.

 >> If you must use a patched version of 0.12.0, then I'd consider 
incorporating
 >>  that patch into the official cygwin dist; also, in that  case,
 >> we could submit your patch upstream for incorporation into the  "real"
 >>  0.13.0...
 >>
 >
 > As the patch just removes the embedded glib, I think its of no use
 > to the "real" pkgconfig.

Yep, you're right.

 >> 3) cygextras: why not submit these as patches to the cygwin DLL?
 >
 > cygextras contains strptime and getdelim. I understand the strptime
 > is "coming soon" to cygwin anyway, so I'll just drop mine then.
 > getdelim came from the gnu C library. Again its just a distraction
 > from working on gnome, and I'll leave it to others to add it to
 > cygwin.

Understood.

 >> 4) berkeley db: folks have been asking for this for a long time.
 >
 > No. I don't have any free time to support cygwin packages, although
 > I do have great respect for those, such as yourself, who do. I
 > think that gnome no longer requires version 2.7.7, but has moved on
 >  to version 3.x.x. This patched version did actually pass its test
 > suite when I first did it, but I no longer have access to the
 > cygwin tcl port I used, so I cannot reproduce the result.

'Kay.  Looks like there's a volunteer on the case...

--Chuck