The pkgconfig ecosystem
Victor Eijkhout
Fall 2022
1 Eijkhout – Pkgconfig tutorial – Fall 2022
Justification
Pkgconfig is a de facto discovery mechanism for CMake packages. We
discuss:
how to discover package
how to make your package discoverable
2 Eijkhout – Pkgconfig tutorial – Fall 2022
Using packages through
pkgconfig
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Problem
You want to install a package/application
. . . which needs 2 or 3 other packages.
cmake \
-D PACKAGE1_INC=/users/my/package1/include \
-D PACKAGE1_LIB=/users/my/package1/lib \
-D PACKAGE2_INC=/users/my/package2/include/packaage \
-D PACKAGE2_LIB=/users/my/package2/lib64 \
../newpackage
Can this be make simpler?
4 Eijkhout – Pkgconfig tutorial – Fall 2022
Finding packages with ‘pkg config’
Many packages come with a package.pc file
Add that location to PKG_CONFIG_PATH
That defines variables in your own cmake file
Example: PETSc
add $PETSC_DIR/$PETSC_ARCH/lib/pkgconfig to config path, then
find_package( PkgConfig REQUIRED )
pkg_check_modules( PETSC REQUIRED petsc )
target_include_directories(
program PUBLIC
${PETSC_INCLUDE_DIRS} )
5 Eijkhout – Pkgconfig tutorial – Fall 2022
Eigen
1 cmake_minimum_required( VERSION 3.12 )
2 project( eigentest )
3
4 find_package( PkgConfig REQUIRED )
5 pkg_check_modules( EIGEN REQUIRED eigen3 )
6
7 add_executable( eigentest eigentest.cxx )
8 target_include_directories(
9 eigentest PUBLIC
10 ${EIGEN_INCLUDE_DIRS})
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Where do these settings come from?
find $TACC_EIGEN_DIR -name \*.pc
${TACC_EIGEN_DIR}/share/pkgconfig/eigen3.pc
7 Eijkhout – Pkgconfig tutorial – Fall 2022
Pkgconfig outside CMake
.pc files are also useful outside CMake:
$ pkg-config --cflags tbb
-I/opt/intel//oneapi/tbb/latest/lib/pkgconfig/../..//include
$ pkg-config --libs tbb
-L/opt/intel//oneapi/tbb/latest/lib/pkgconfig/../..//lib/intel64
/gcc4.8 -ltbb
(useful for packages where there is no module)
8 Eijkhout – Pkgconfig tutorial – Fall 2022
Making your package
discoverable through
pkgconfig
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How does pkgconfig work?
Use the PKG_CONFIG_PATH variable:
$ module show cxxopts 2>&1 | grep -i pkg
prepend_path("PKG_CONFIG_PATH","/work2/00434/eijkhout/cxxopts/intel23/
lib64/pkgconfig")
10 Eijkhout – Pkgconfig tutorial – Fall 2022
Write your own .pc file
configure_file line in CMakeLists.txt:
configure_file(
${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/${PROJECT_NAME}.pc.in
${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/${PROJECT_NAME}.pc
@ONLY)
11 Eijkhout – Pkgconfig tutorial – Fall 2022
Write your own .pc file’
The .pc.in file:
prefix="@CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX@"
exec_prefix="${prefix}"
libdir="${prefix}/lib"
includedir="${prefix}/include"
Name: @PROJECT_NAME@
Description: @CMAKE_PROJECT_DESCRIPTION@
Version: @PROJECT_VERSION@
Cflags: -I${includedir}
Libs: -L${libdir} -l@libtarget@
Combination of built-in variables and your own:
set( libtarget auxlib )
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