[CMake] FOSDEM Talk on CMake is available

[E. Wing]

> >
> > In sum, pkg-config is already widely used on the Linux/Mac OS X side of
> > things and there doesn't seem to be any fundamental reason to discourage
> > the
> > use of pkg-config on windows even though most windows-only developers are
> > currently completely unaware of how useful pkg-config can be.
>
> So, I had this discussion on the kde list. pkg-config is great if it is
> installed on the machine you are using. However, since it is not a
> default install on anything other than linux machines, you really don't
> want to depend on it. Sun, SGI, OSX, and Windows may or may not have
> pkg-config installed. However, they may have the software you are
> looking for. If you don't find it (the software you are looking for)
> because there is no pkg-config, then people will not like your software.
> I suppose if you really wanted to depend on pkg-config, you would look
> for it in the first line of your project and error out with a
> FATAL_ERROR if it is not found. Tell the user to install pkg-config
> before configuring your project. For example, I don't think pkg-config
> is on any machines at Kitware other than linux machines.
>

Actually, I would go further and argue that pkg-config is
fundamentally flawed. It totally breaks with respect to
cross-compiling. It doesn't work that well either when you have
multiple versions of of a library installed either, either because you
are testing different compiled variations or perhaps legacy versions.
The whole notion of having to execute an external program to get build
flags seems hokey to me as well.

-Eric