Re: Mingw pkg-config not working

[Jon Turney <jon.turney@dronecode.org.uk>]

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

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