From: Tom Copeland <tom@...>
Date: 2006-12-29T23:33:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby extension issue

On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 18:13 +0900, Wim Vander Schelden wrote:
> Thank you, but my main problem is the pkg_config :-(

pkg_config calls the Gnome utility pkg-config to get information about
the libraries that are installed.  For example:

$ pkg-config --libs libebook-1.2
-pthread -L/lib -lebook-1.2 -lgnome-2 -lpopt -ledataserver-1.2
-lgnomevfs-2 -lgobject-2.0 -lxml2 -lz -lgconf-2 -lbonobo-2
-lbonobo-activation -lORBit-2 -lm -lgmodule-2.0 -ldl -lgthread-2.0
-lglib-2.0 

The nice thing about using the extconf.rb pkg_config method is that you
don't have to explicitly list all of those libraries to compile/link
your extension.

One thing that confused me at first was that the extconf.rb method is
"pkg_config" (with an underscore) and the Gnome utility program is
"pkg-config" (with a dash).  But anyhow, it's very handy and it can make
your extconf.rb files much shorter.

Yours,

Tom