Re: [PATCH] Use PKG_CHECK_MODULES to detect the libxml2 library - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: [PATCH] Use PKG_CHECK_MODULES to detect the libxml2 library
Date
Msg-id 9171.1583944750@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: [PATCH] Use PKG_CHECK_MODULES to detect the libxml2 library  (Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>)
Responses Re: [PATCH] Use PKG_CHECK_MODULES to detect the libxml2 library  (Hugh McMaster <hugh.mcmaster@outlook.com>)
List pgsql-hackers
Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> writes:
> On 10 Mar 2020, at 18:38, Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
>> Btw., here is an older thread for the same issue
<https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/1358164265.29612.7.camel%40vanquo.pezone.net>. Might be worth reflecting on
theissues discussed there. 

> Thanks, didn't realize that the subject had been up for discussion earlier as
> well.
> For me, the duplication aspect is the most troubling, since we'd still need the
> xml2-config fallback and thus won't be able to simplify the code.

Yeah, but at least it's concentrated in a few lines in configure.in.

I think that the main objection to this is the documentation/confusion
issues raised by Noah in that old thread.  Still, we probably don't
have much choice given that some distros are going to remove xml2-config.
In that connection, Hugh's patch lacks docs which is entirely not OK,
but the doc changes in Peter's old patch look workable.

I wonder whether we ought to try to align this with our documented
procedure for falling back if you have no icu-config but want to
use ICU; that part of the docs suggests setting ICU_CFLAGS and ICU_LIBS
manually.  The patch as it stands doesn't seem to support manually
giving XML2_CFLAGS and XML2_LIBS, but it looks like it could easily
be adjusted to allow that.

Also, I see that pkg.m4 says

dnl Note that if there is a possibility the first call to
dnl PKG_CHECK_MODULES might not happen, you should be sure to include an
dnl explicit call to PKG_PROG_PKG_CONFIG in your configure.ac

which we are not doing.  We got away with that as long as there was only
one PKG_CHECK_MODULES call ... but with two, I'd expect that the second
one will fall over if the first one isn't executed.

            regards, tom lane



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