PKG-CONFIG

Using pkg-config to set variables

When compiling software from source you might need to set variables such as $CFLAGS or $LDFLAGS. Here the pkg-config command comes handy. Nevertheless, pkg-config only works with libraries supporting pkg-config, meaning that there is a /pkgconfig sub-directory in the library dir with a corresponding *.pc file. If that is the case you can easily set these variables by typing (tcsh):

> setenv CFLAGS "`pkg-config --cflags PACKAGE-NAME`"

and

> setenv LDLAGS "`pkg-config --libs PACKAGE-NAME`"

where PACKAGE-NAME is the package you need. However, by default pkg-config looks for *.pc files contained in /usr/lib/pkgconfig only. If you need pkg-config to search another path as well you may set the $PKG_CONFIG_PATH variable accordingly. This variable must contain paths leading to a directory containing *.pc files. Very often a package comes with a pkg-config directory containing the corresponding *.pc files. You may set multiple paths in the $PKG_CONFIG_PATH variable using : as separator. Here is an example setting two additional paths:

> setenv PKG_CONFIG_PATH "path1-to-*.pc-files:path2-to-*.pc-files"

It is important to note that the --libs option sometimes only returns the link time directory, omitting the run time directory. Therefore, you might have to correct the LDFLAGS variable accordingly.

Remark: Paths contained in $PKG_CONFIG_PATH are preferred over the default path by pkg-config. This means if a corresponding *.pc file is found in the $PKG_CONFIG_PATH directories, a *.pc with the same name in /usr/lib/pkgconfig will not be considered.

Here is an example (again in tcsh):

> setenv CFLAGS `"pkg-config --cflags gtk+-2.0"`

type man pkg-config fore further information.