Hi Tollef, On Fri, Sep 09, 2016 at 12:49:20PM +0200, Tollef Fog Heen wrote: > Having cross-pkg-config look in a directory which is unlikely to contain > files for the architecture you are building for, is not particularly > useful and can in some cases be actively harmful.
Let me respectfully disagree. Usually, when you use a .pc file, you Build-Depend on its -dev package. The rules for satisfying build dependencies ensure that the architecture is correct for the ones that you need. In contrast, we have a lot of source packages, whose build dependencies are considered satisfied despite failing to build, because pkg-config fails to find a relevant .pc file. The failure mode for not finding .pc certainly is easier to diagnose, but at the same time it is also much more frequent. So I think having stuff work in exchange for a bit more debugging is a sensible trade-off. Regardless of what the answer will be here, I'm willing to help implement it. The one thing that doesn't work for me is the combination of you refusing to consider /usr/lib/pkgconfig and package maintainers refusing to move their .pc file (when given a patch). Having builds not work at all is a far worse trade-off than difficult debugging. Helmut
