Re: pkgsrc picking up wrong fontconfig

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

"David H. Gutteridge" <david%gutteridge.ca@localhost> writes:

> On Thu, 29 Aug 2019, at 15:35:26 -0400, Greg Troxel wrote:

>> As far as I can tell something must have changed in pkgsrc fairly
>> recently, at least since Q2, but it feels like the last two weeks, to
>> provoke this -- does anybody know that is?
>
> I'm afraid I don't have a decent answer for you, but I can tell you that
> it occurred on or before the 20th, since I was privately emailed about
> this around then, and reproduced it then.
>
> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-changes/2019/08/21/msg196209.html
> I started trying to find the full explanation, but simply haven't had
> the time vs. other things. But the pango.pc file now installed by that
> package expects fontconfig >= 2.11.91. On its own, I can't say why
> that's a problem.

This is beginning to make sense to me.  In pango's pkgconfig, it
requires fontconfig 2.11.91.   And in pango's pkgsrc Makefile, it has
BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS to match, so that it gets a new enough fontconfig.

But, pango's bl3 file does *not* set BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS for
fontconfig, and does have a fontconfig line.  So that means that native
fontconfig will be be linked in on netbsd8, because absent an
API_DEPENDS it is good enough.  So then various programs will fail
pkgconfig (because of pango), and if they worked would link both native
fontconfig and pkgsrc fontconfig, which is a mess.

So, I think if a package sets BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS in Makefile, and has
that package in bl3, then it needs to set that depends in bl3 also.

Further, I think we risk having both native and pkgsrc fontconfig, and
that perhaps our "use pkgsrc if necessary, otherwise native" strategy is
unsound, and we should have one of them configured, and if native and
not good enough just fail.

The preceding paragraph is complicated and controversial, and we might
want to just change the default API_DEPENDS for fontconfig to at least
be what pango wants, as a way of avoiding both trouble and avoiding
resolving the big issue :-)

So questions are:

  Is it correct to add BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS for fontconfig to pango's
  bl3?  If not, what's the right thing?

  Should we change fontconfig's default API_DEPENDS (in its bl3) higher?
  To 2.11.91 (pango's need, hoping that matches other newish needs)?  To
  2.13.0 (current pkgsrc version)?  If not, what should we doing to
  avoid linking native and pkg fontconfig?