[article] trimming down autoconf's configure scripts by using pkg-config

[Enrico Weigelt]

* Alan Coopersmith <Alan.Coopersmith at Sun.COM> schrieb:

Hi,

> So this seems to be advocating going back to the Imake model of having
> to maintain per-OS lists of what works and doesn't, which is a huge pain

Eh ?! Sure you don't mix something up ?

I'm proposing to move out the whole "compatibility" stuff into 
separate packages, which are just imported via pkg-config. 

For example, if we're using the pthread library: 
No longer try to link it in somehow, but instead just asking 
pkg-config, what we have to do to get it in.

* http://www.dev.metux.de/released/stdc-pthread/stdc-pthread-1.0.0.0.tar.bz2

In fact, the pthread library ist just the start - a very trivial 
one, I have to admit. Next coming is stdc-strings, which represents 
the standard libc string handling functions. On some platforms 
they're buggy, so many packages currently have to add special 
wrappers for them (ie. tcl/tk does this). This will no longer be 
necessary as soon as we have *one* package which is responsible 
for supplying an 100% standards conform interface and this one is 
just imported via  pkg-config. 
(note: we can add quite all compiler/linker options via .pc files)

At the end, indivial packages have (almost) no reason to cope with
platform dependent bugs/incompatibilities, since evrything's hidden
behind the pkconfig'ed wrapper packages.


cu
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