Subject: [bug#68813] [core-updates PATCH 08/20] gnu: pkg-config: Alias to pkgconf-as-pkg-config.

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2024 23:33:13 +0100

Hi,

Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]> skribis:
>>
>>> This switches the default pkg-config implementation used in Guix to pkgconf.
>>
>> I didn’t follow discussions and I learned about ‘pkgconf’ only recently.
>> I’m afraid that adding this to ‘core-updates’ would further postpone its
>> merger, which was already being discussed beginning of January.
>
> Was it in a good shape to be merged back then?

No, it wasn’t:
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2024-01/msg00096.html>.
But a lot of work has gone into the branch since that time that goes way
beyond “fixing problems”.

[...]

> I've manually rebuilt a good chunk of the world (mpv and plasmatube)
> using pkgconf, and haven't seen any breakage caused by it.  You can try
> do build these patches on top of current core-updates on the
> hydra-guix-129 machine, which should still have it in its store.

I won’t try, I’m just saying from experience that the “just one last
tiny change” strategy never converges.  :-)

>> (Aside: where should I read about the rationale of the pkg-config ->
>> pkgconf move?)

[...]

> The above demonstrates that pkgconf's behavior is to consider *.private
> fields only when provided the --static option, which is what we want.
>
> I hope this helps understanding the rationale.

It does, and it looks like a nice improvement.  Thanks for explaining!

Ludo’.