Mingw pkg-config not working

[Carlo B.]

Hello,
I wanted to report that I received a reply on the issue that I had opened here:

https://todo.sr.ht/~kaniini/pkgconf/10#comment-7894

The report has been closed and I got this reply:

"You should use a symlink instead of a wrapper script when using the
personality feature."

I hope that somebody has understood what he means (posix is not
exactly my primary platform) and it could be useful for fixing the
issue.

Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely,

Carlo Bramini.

Il giorno gio 26 mar 2020 alle ore 14:07 Carlo B.
<carlo.bramini@gmail.com> ha scritto:
>
> Hello,
> I implemented the solution to this problem as a patch to
> pkgconf.cygport as requested.
> I attached small patch to this email, which resolved the troubles with
> CMake and Meson.
> I hope that you will find it useful and  some developers will gently
> apply the correction to fix the issue.
>
> Thank you very much for your time and your support.
> Sincerely,
>
> Carlo Bramini.
>
> Il giorno sab 22 feb 2020 alle ore 18:47 Jon Turney
> <jon.turney@dronecode.org.uk> ha scritto:
> >
> > On 20/02/2020 11:06, Carlo B. wrote:
> > [...]
> > > x86_64-w64-mingw32-pkg-config are emulated with a shell script, for
> > > example the one for i686 is:
> > >
> > > #!/bin/sh
> > > exec pkgconf --personality=i686-w64-mingw32 $@
> > >
> > > But while this solution mostly works when you exec it from the command
> > > line, it makes impossible to detect the presence of the tool from
> > > meson and cmake build systems.
> > > If you try to do this on the bash prompt, you get:
> > >
> > > $ i686-w64-mingw32-pkg-config --version
> > > pkgconf: --version specified with other options or module names,
> > > assuming --modversion.
> > > Please specify at least one package name on the command line.
> > >
> > > and this is exactly what happens with those build systems (and perhaps
> > > others, I don't know): it tries to call pkg-config with "--version"
> > > and it executes the above script that calls pkgconf. But sadly, the
> > > presence of the "--personality" option makes the process to fail,
> > > because the "--version" is currently allowed only when no other
> > > options are added.
> > > And, for this reason, meson and cmake fail the detection of the tool.
> > >
> > > I have also filed an issue here for pkgconf:
> > > https://todo.sr.ht/~kaniini/pkgconf/10
> > > because the solution is actually to ignore the presence of the
> > > "--personality" option when the "--version" is written, but
> > > unfortunately I have not received any feedback.
> > >
> > > So, I'm also writing here, with the hope that you could find a solution.
> > [...]
> >
> > Thanks for reporting this issue.
> >
> > I guess the alternative to fixing pkgconf would be to modify those
> > wrapper scripts to detect when the parameters are just '--version' (or
> > equivalent) and not use --personality in that case?
> >
> > These wrapper scripts are specific to cygwin (generated by the cygport,
> > see [1])
> >
> > It's possible other distros have more sophisticated wrapper scripts,
> > which avoid this problem?
> >
> > If you do write or discover some improved wrapper scripts, a patch to
> > [1] to update them would be appreciated.
> >
> > [1]
> > https://cygwin.com/git-cygwin-packages/?p=git/cygwin-packages/pkgconf.git;a=blob;f=pkgconf.cygport#l84