[Mono-devel-list] GAC and third party libraries: post Beta planning.

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

> But let me start by saying that I'm definitely not a *nix expert, and
> I'm not claiming to know the answer to everything, but unix already
> allows the output of other tools to be included in parameters to mcs, so
> why not just use pkg-config inline to resolve the path to third party
> libraries (this probably was answered numerous times already, but I
> haven't had time to read all messages this week) ?  Because that would
> mean that you still need to know the assembly names (but not their
> location) ?  Is that an issue ?

Gert, using pkg-config to resolve third party libraries is exactly what
we are doing.

As I said, new users will be puzzled by what they need to do:

	mcs `pkg-config --libs gtk-sharp` a.cs

Explain to people that the "`" character is different than the "'"
character, and do this on a live class.

So in this case, I feel that usability is a lot more important than
backwards/forwards compatibility with the MS compiler, and that we are
justified to add a -pkg: flag.

Miguel