The gnome-config program is used to retrieve information from installed libraries in
the system. It is typically used to compile and link against one or
more GNOME libraries. Here is a typical usage scenario in a Makefile:
program: program.c
cc program.c `gnome-config --cflags --libs gnomeui`
Usually, a combination of flags is used like --cflags and --libs in
conjunction with the list of libraries that your program uses. These
libraries are specified as part of the command line.
gnome-config includes hard-coded information for a number of
libraries: the ones used to build gnome-libs, and the ones provided by
gnome-libs (which gnome-config is part of). Other
libraries are integrated by providing gnome-config modules.
OPTIONS
The following Generic options are supported:
--version
Requests that the gnome-libs version information be displayed.
--modversion
Requests that the version information of the libraries specified on
the command line be displayed. This information is either the
gnome-libs version for libraries that are part of gnome-libs, or the
version specified in
MODULE_VERSION
variable in the module configuration file.
--help
Displays a help message and terminates.
The following options are used to compile and link programs with GNOME
libraries and components:
--cflags
This prints pre-processor and compiler flags required to compile the
module with the libraries specified on the command line.
--libs
This prints the library linking information. These flags can be
passed to the compiler driver to link an object file with the
libraries specified on the command line.
--libs-only-L
This only prints the -L/-R part of --libs for the libraries specified
on the command line.
--libs-only-l
This only prints the -l part of --libs for the libraries specified on
the command line.
The following options are used to find out the directories that were
used to install the various files that are part of the GNOME
distribution, they correspond to the variable names used by the
Makefiles (Makefiles in GNOME are compliant with the GNU standard for
makefiles, and they typically use GNU autoconf and GNU automake to get
these right and uniform):
--prefix
Outputs the prefix that was used to configure the GNOME libraries.
--exec-prefix
Outputs the exec-prefix used to install the GNOME libraries.
--bindir
Outputs the bindir used to install the GNOME libraries.
--sbindir
Outputs the sbindir used to install the GNOME libraries.
--libexecdir
Outputs the libexecdir used to install the GNOME libraries.
--datadir
Outputs the datadir used to install the GNOME libraries.
--sysconfdir
Outputs the sysconfdir used to install the GNOME libraries.
--sharedstatedir
Outputs the sharedstatedir used to install the GNOME libraries.
--localstatedir
Outputs the localstatedir used to install the GNOME libraries.
--libdir
Outputs the libdir used to install the GNOME libraries.
--infodir
Outputs the infodir used to install the GNOME libraries.
--mandir
Outputs the mandir used to install the GNOME libraries.
--includedir
Outputs the includedir used to install the GNOME libraries.
The basic set of libraries you can link with are:
glib (calls glib-config)
idl (to be used with orbit-idl)
gnome
gnomeui
gnorba
gtk (calls gtk-config)
gtkxmhtml (only --libs)
zvt (only --libs)
MODULE INTEGRATION
gnome-config can incorporate more GNOME libraries, to do so the
library author needs to install an xxxxConf.sh file in the directory
returned by "gnome-config --libdir" or in any directory listed in the
GNOME_LIBCONFIG_PATH
environment variable or in the directory pointed by
GNOME_PATH/lib
The prefix "xxxx" should be substituted with the module name, for
example, the applets library installs the appletConf.sh file.
The configuration file is a shell script evaluated by
gnome-config and it should define four shell variable settings:
xxx_LIBDIR
This specifies any directory paths required to find the libraries
defined by this module.
XXX_LIBS
A list of compiler options to link the code with this module.
XXX_INCLUDEDIR
This specifies the flags that should be passed to the compiler for the
program to be able to locate the header files provided by the module.
MODULE_VERSION
This should be the module version number. It should be in the format
"module-version", for example "bonobo-0.1" is a valid
MODULE_VERSION
setting.
This is an example file for an imaginary library called "foo":
#
# Configuration file for using library foo.
#
FOO_LIBDIR="-L/opt/foo/lib"
FOO_LIBS="-lfoo"
FOO_INCLUDEDIR="-I/opt/foo/include"
MODULE_VERSION=foo-2.3
Typically these files are generated at configuration or compilation
time, authors usually use a template file, this is an example template
file for fooConf.sh, it is called fooConf.sh.in:
#
# Configuration file for using library foo.
#
FOO_LIBDIR="@FOO_LIBDIR@"
FOO_LIBS="@FOO_LIBS@"
FOO_INCLUDEDIR="@FOO_INCLUDEDIR@"
MODULE_VERSION=foo-@VERSION@
The above template file is typically processed by the Makefile to
produce the actual configuration file. This is a sample piece of
code that shows how to get this right:
## We create fooConf.sh here and not from configure because we want
## to get the paths expanded correctly. Macros like srcdir are given
## the value NONE in configure if the user doesn't specify them (this
## is an autoconf feature, not a bug).
fooConf.sh: fooConf.sh.in Makefile
## Use sed and then mv to avoid problems if the user interrupts.
sed -e 's?@FOO_LIBDIR@?$(FOO_LIBDIR)?g' \
-e 's?@FOO_INCLUDEDIR@?$(FOO_INCLUDEDIR)?g' \
-e 's?@FOO_LIBS@?$(FOO_LIBS)?g' \
-e 's?@VERSION@@?$(VERSION)?g' \
< $(srcdir)/fooConf.sh.in > fooConf.tmp \
&& mv fooConf.tmp fooConf.sh
This file is then copied into a system accessible location.
ENVIRONMENT
The gnome-config program uses the directories listed in the
GNOME_LIBCONFIG_PATH
to locate library definition files (Conf.sh) installed on the system.
The variable
GNOME_PATH
is used as a list of directories where GNOME applications and
libraries have been installed. gnome-config looks in the
lib subdirectory of each directory listed here for library
definition files (Conf.sh) installed.
AUTHOR
gnome-config was written by Miguel de Icaza, Raja Harinath and various
hackers in the GNOME team. It was inspired by Owen Taylor's
gtk-config program.
