Please add pkg-config support for use with GNU AutoTools (was #237 not merged by mistake?)

[loren-osborn]

🤔 What's the problem you're trying to solve?

GNU AutoTools refuses to identify cucumber-cpp as installed because it doesn't install .pc files. There was a PR for this (#237) in 2019 that appeared to have been approved for inclusion, but never got merged into main. Was this PR discarded in error? /

✨ What's your proposed solution?

Either

• explain why cucumber-cpp should not support GNU AutoTools
• explain why #237 was incorrect, abandoned or otherwise or
• merge #237 into main and initiate a 0.8.0 release in the near future after sufficient testing, and inclusion of any other pending features.

⛏ Have you considered any alternatives or workarounds?

I could write my own upstream *.pc files, but this seems like an inferior solution to including them upstream.

📚 Any additional context?

I'm really looking for an explanation of why #237 was closed, and if it was closed in error.

[mpkorstanje]

Was this PR discarded in error?

Looking at the timeline, it seems this PR was closed when the default branch was renamed from master to main. So an unintended side effects I assume.

While I'm not the maintainer of this project, I imagine it would speed things along if you could recreate the pull request.

[mpkorstanje]

Also closed in error

• https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-cpp/pull/234

And I'm surprised it's only one other.

[loren-osborn]

I'm not sure If I understand cucumber-cpp quite well enough to do that yet. The PR does appear to be missing a direct dependency on pthreads that I'm testing locally at the moment.

[loren-osborn]

Also closed in error

• Add make option in Readme #234

And I'm surprised it's only one other.

Good catch

[mpkorstanje]

I'm not sure If I understand cucumber-cpp quite well enough to do that yet.

Ah that's unfortunate.

I'm afraid I know just enough CPP and CMake to be dangerous. So I can't really help. But I hope other people than me can comment on the specifics.

[loren-osborn]

As per the README.md, I tried to move the discussion here: https://community.smartbear.com/discussions/cucumberos/cpp-pkg-configgnu-autotools-support/264750

[mpkorstanje]

I think those instructions are out of date. I can't imagine anyone reading the SmartBear forums. And for context https://mattwynne.net/new-beginning.

[ursfassler]

As mentioned, this seems to be an error. I will look into it soon.

[ursfassler]

In the PR #237 the cucumber-cpp version is hard coded in the file src/cmake/cucumber-cpp-nomain.pc.in and src/cmake/cucumber-cpp.pc.in. I'd like to get this version from git and only from git to reduce a source of errors. Unfortunately we then run into the problem of not doing it correctly when it is build from the source archive. We have to solve this anyway for #295.

[ursfassler]

@loren-osborn do you mean that pthread is missing within the src/cmake/cucumber-cpp.pc.in file?

[ursfassler]

@loren-osborn The link to the discussion group is fixed with #299

[loren-osborn]

@loren-osborn do you mean that pthread is missing within the src/cmake/cucumber-cpp.pc.in file?

I saw the CMake macro for linking in a threading library, and didn’t see a cooresponding package “Requires:” specification… that isn’t to say that such a line is necessary… I don’t know… that’s why I didn’t volunteer to do this myself.

[loren-osborn]

I'd like to get this version from git and only from git to reduce a source of errors

I think industry best practice for this is to actually have one single copy of the version number somewhere in the source so that the project, including its version number, can remain buildable from a tarball. I fully agree, if git is detected, that the build system should verify that the version tag sanely corresponds to the indicated version, but should robustly handle pre-tagged scenarios and interim builds. (I’ve worked on mechanisms like this before if you need help.)

(UPDATED: clarified wording)