please use pkg-config in preference to sdl2-config (3429)

[GalacticEmperor1]

Issue №3429 opened by smcv at 2022-08-26 08:34:53

I see that config_unix.py uses sdl2-config to detect SDL 2.

Using package-specific -config programs on Unix is increasingly discouraged, because they're difficult to deal with when cross-compiling, and tend to be inconsistent between libraries. The replacement is to use pkg-config or a reimplementation of the same interface (like pkgconf). pygame already does this for freetype, with a fallback to freetype-config.

In SDL's case, the direct equivalent of sdl2-config --cflags --libs is pkg-config sdl2 --cflags --libs, which reads information from sdl2.pc. SDL 3 will probably remove sdl*-config, so that pkg-config sdl3 will be the only way to get this information.

If the PKG_CONFIG environment variable is set, please use that in preference to hard-coding pkg-config, something like this:

os.getenv('PKG_CONFIG', 'pkg-config') + ' sdl2'

(This is because people who use a reimplementation of the reference pkg-config or a cross-compiler often rely on being able to set $PKG_CONFIG to point to it.)

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Comments

# # smcv commented at 2022-08-26 08:36:32

SDL 2.0.0 already had sdl2.pc, so a fallback to sdl2-config is probably not necessary.

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# # robertpfeiffer commented at 2022-08-26 13:10:17

We can do this. We should probably keep sdl2-config in as a fallback until it's no longer shipped by SDL though.

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# # smcv commented at 2022-08-26 13:59:15

We should probably keep sdl2-config in as a fallback until it's no longer shipped by SDL though

I don't think that's necessary, but if you want to, the same logic as for freetype looks reasonable.

[ankith26]

The meson PR would resolve this issue because meson internally makes use of pkg-config (with a fallback to sdl2-config)