Arch Linux

kumyco

Member

From: somewhere

Registered: 2008-06-23

Posts: 153

Website

pkg-config vs the rest

first I'd like to make clear, this is not a question about which is better, etc.
i typically write makefiles by hand and that works ok, but it doesn't quite fit with my way of thinking and that makes it difficult if not an outright hack-job writing them.
the way i think of the build is,

for src in *.c;
    do obj $src;
done
build bin *.o

where the obj command is along the lines of gcc -c $*
and build is gcc -o $*

i find that i know ahead of time the dependencies, so i plug in a pkg-config line and it works well, i am not familiar with other systems though, my main question is for those that have experience in cross-platform (*nix) systems with pkg-config,
does it hold up, if i transfer a build.sh to another system depending only ?
i know it works perfectly in Archlinux, but the hype is all about the dependency tracking fancy systems like scons, cmake, auto* ... i guess i just don't get it, i find that with scons for example to build a gtk app, i have to figure the deps, (using pkg-config), which kinda defeats the point.

so to sum up, can i rely solely on pkg-config (knowing my deps supply .pc files from upstream)?
is my method flawed in some way?