According to the FAQ at
https://people.freedesktop.org/~dbn/pkg-config-guide.html#faq :
My library z uses libx internally, but does not expose libx data types in its
public API.
What do I put in my z.pc file?
Again, add the module to Requires.private if it supports pkg-config. In this
case,
the compiler flags will be emitted unnecessarily, but it ensures that the
linker
flags will be present when linking statically.
So it is a common practice to add stuff to Requires.private, and it is not a
good idea
to ask upstream not to do that. With meson (as it is a case here), it
generates this
Requires.private automatically.
So it looks like removing this tag at install time is the way to go after all,
unless meson grows an easy way to omit these.
An alternative is to maintain "proper" Depends for the foo-dev package.
("proper" is in quotes, because it is only needed to satisfy pkg-config
wishes).
*sigh*.
/mjt
