Ticket #178 (closed enhancement: invalid)

Opened 1 year ago

Last modified 1 year ago

What does pkgconfig(xxx) is needed by ... mean?

Reported by: cwcarlson Assigned to: RpmTickets
Priority: minor Milestone:
Component: rpm Version: RPM Development
Keywords: pkgconfig needed Cc:

Description

I'd like to suggest that some documentation be generated that explains what the dependency requirement of the following form means:

pkgconfig(xbproto) is needed by libX11-devel-1.3.1-3.fc13.i686

I have tried running "pkg-config xbproto", but it doesn't do anything. There are no man pages that help, searching the rpm man page doesn't identify pkgconfig anywhere, and there isn't anything useful on the Internet. I want to know what I need to do to satisfy the requirement.

Thank you.

Change History

08/17/10 07:52:18 changed by FlorianFesti

  • priority changed from blocker to minor.

That's just a normal requirement as any other requirement. The parenthesis don't have any special meaning within requirements. All they do is giving an informal hint that the requirement was autogenerated during the build process (as most requirements). The script that generated it was /usr/lib/rpm/pkgconfigdeps.sh

I agree that some docs on what requirements are autogenerated and how would be a win, though.

Wrt your actual problem you might want to ask for help on #rpm.org on freenode or on the rpm mailing list.

08/18/10 04:01:25 changed by cwcarlson

Thank you for such a quick response.

I appreciate your suggestion, but I really want to make RPM more robust so that my wife could use it (or someone that is not tech-savvy).

It seems to me that RPM has a need for something to be done before it can install a package, but the error message does not tell me, a user, what to do. Having a prerequisite is easy. I just find a package with the required library/tool, and install it. That I can explain to a non-technical person. As of now, I have no idea what to tell anybody to resolve this requirement.

I'll check with the #rpm.org and see what they have to offer.

Thanks again, Chris

08/18/10 08:08:45 changed by pmatilai

  • status changed from new to closed.
  • resolution set to invalid.

Rpm is a low-level tool, what you want is widely available tools built on top of rpm, generally known as "depsolvers": yum, smart, zypper, urpmi etc. Non-technical users are best referred to these higher level tools for package management tasks.

Based on the "fc13" hint from libX11-devel-1.3.1-3.fc13.i686, you're using Fedora, and in that case what you want to use is yum: # yum install libX11-devel

That takes care of all the details, no point fussing around with rpm. Or for even more enduser-friendly tool, look at PackageKit? (also available by default in Fedora). For future, these kind of questions are best directed at distribution discussion/support forums, this is rpm /bug/ tracker, not a support forum.

08/18/10 13:15:13 changed by cwcarlson

Thanks again for your quick response.

Yes, I was trying to use yum, but our company has restrictions on Internet access. Since yum could not access its network addresses, it failed every time with some message about repository access even though I was trying to install from a DVD. This is what caused me to drop down to rpm.

I don't think I'm asking that rpm be changed in any way, I was hoping that some lead could be added to the rpm documentation as to how to find out what pkgconfig(...) means as a dependence. Just some kind of hint as to where to go or what to do to resolve it.

Thanks again, Chris