Pkg-config

Last updated
pkg-config
Original author(s) James Henstridge; rewritten by Havoc Pennington
Developer(s) Tollef Fog Heen / freedesktop.org
Initial release2000;24 years ago (2000) or earlier
Stable release
0.29.2 / March 20, 2017;7 years ago (2017-03-20)
Repository gitlab.freedesktop.org/pkg-config/pkg-config
Written in C
Operating system Unix-like
Type Programming tool
License GNU GPL
Website www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config/

pkg-config is software development tool that queries information about libraries from a local, file-based database for the purpose of building a codebase that depends on them. It allows for sharing a codebase in a cross-platform way by using host-specific library information that is stored outside of yet referenced by the codebase. This indirection allows the codebase to build on a host without encoding host-specific library information in the codebase.

Contents

The tool is invoked via its command line interface (CLI), and it reports library information via standard output. Some information, such as version information, is more useful to the programmer. Other information, such as command-line options (flags), is more useful to build tools such as a compiler and a linker.

The tool was originally designed for Linux, and is now also available for BSD, Windows, macOS, and Solaris. The first implementation was written in shell script. [1] Later, it was rewritten in C leveraging GLib. [2]

Database

To enable use of the tool, a referenced library must have a corresponding .pc file stored in the file system location designated for that purpose (the location varies by system). This file should be stored as part of the installation process as handled by RPM, deb, or other packaging system or by compiling from source code.

A .pc file contains various information such as the location of header files, library binaries and various descriptive information. It may also include a list of dependent libraries that programs using the library need to use.

Example

The following example .pc file defines information for libpng. It starts with defining variables that are used throughout the rest of the file. It includes descriptive information including name "libpng" and version "1.2.8". The Cflags entry defines an option that the C preprocessor uses to locate the library's header files – in /usr/local/include/libpng12. The Libs entry defines options that define the location of library binaries, /usr/local/lib, and identify which library binary files to link.

prefix=/usr/local exec_prefix=${prefix}libdir=${exec_prefix}/lib includedir=${exec_prefix}/include Name:libpng Description:LoadsandsavesPNGfiles Version:1.2.8 Libs:-L${libdir}-lpng12-lz Cflags:-I${includedir}/libpng12

The following is an example build command that uses this file to specify options to gcc. The output of command pkg-config --libs --cflags libpng is passed to gcc via its command line interface.

$ gcc-otesttest.c$(pkg-config--libs--cflagslibpng)

Alternative implementations

Notable variants of pkg-config:

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References

  1. ↑ Havoc Pennington (4 June 2000). "Re: the *-config scripts" . Retrieved 2020-01-22.
  2. ↑ Havoc Pennington (23 July 2000). "pkg-config" . Retrieved 2020-01-22.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Found on spread of pkgconf but not spread of pkg-config on repology
  4. 1 2 3 4 https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2018-May/029252.html Replacing pkg-config with pkgconf] on arch-dev-public@lists.archlinux.org
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