X drivers depend on Gnome?

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Alex Goncharov <alex-goncharov at comcast.net> (from Tue, 03 Feb  
2009 19:30:18 -0500):

> ,--- You/Jeremy (Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:19:12 -0600) ----*
> | The pkg-config is not GNOME. Even the GTK+2 is not GNOME.
> | I am VERY  surpised about that you are whining over it.
>
> In other words, you think that making base X11 blocks (such as drivers
> and libxcb) depend on Gnome, per this definition in bsd.port.mk:
>
>     # USE_GNOME	- A list of the Gnome dependencies the port has (e.g.,
>     #		glib12, gtk12).  Implies that the port needs Gnome.
>     #		Implies inclusion of bsd.gnome.mk.  See bsd.gnome.mk
>     #		or http://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome/docs/porting.html
>     #		for more details.
>
> is the right thing, correct?

To repeat what mezz said, the X stuff does not depend upon GNOME. The  
X stuff depends upon pkgconfig. pkgconfig is also used by GNOME. It's  
a little and useful infrastructure thing. With pkgconfig you can check  
if software Y is installed, which version it has, which include path  
you need to compile it, and which libs to link to if you want to use  
it in your software Z. All it does is to do "echo $libs" or "echo  
$includes" or similar. The benefit is that you as a author of software  
Y just need a little config file which lists everything, and pkgconfig  
is responsible for all the common tasks like version check and  
printing. It also unifies the interface if you need to query for  
software. It originated in GNOME, but as it is small and light, it is  
used now in more or less everything. For example openssl uses it too  
(but unfortunately openssl in the FreeBSD base system does not install  
the corresponding config file), but this does not make openssl depend  
upon GNOME. It just looks to you like "GNOME" because the config  
variable in our ports infrastructure is spelled "USE_GNOME". This is  
for historical reasons, it could also be named "USE_INFRASTRUCTURE"  
(it automatically adds suitable BUILD_DEPENDS, RUN_DEPENDS and/or  
LIB_DEPENDS and additional stuff just by adding a keyword).

pkgconfig could be extracted from the USE_GNOME stuff, and it could  
even maintained by someone else than the FreeBSD gnome team, but the  
FreeBSD gnome team is doing a good job at maintaining it, and there's  
no benefit in extracting pkgconfig from USE_GNOME.

HTH,
Alexander.

-- 
Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at
which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
		-- Quentin Crisp

http://www.Leidinger.net    Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7
http://www.FreeBSD.org       netchild @ FreeBSD.org  : PGP ID = 72077137