miqt/pkg-config

pkg-config

MIQT always uses pkg-config to find C++ libraries to bind to.

For Qt Widgets, the .pc definition is supplied along with Qt, but for other third-party libraries, definitions might not be present. To use such third-party libraries, one option is to set the CGO_CFLAGS, CGO_CXXFLAGS, CGO_LDFLAGS environment variables for go build. However, this has a global effect and may cause issues if you use multiple libraries. Therefore, another option is to create a pkg-config file.

To specify the CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS and LDFLAGS for a specific library, make a MyLibrary.pc file as follows:

Name: My Library
Libs: -lfoo
Cflags: -I/path/

Then run PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/path/to/dir/ go build so CGO will find your library. Then, the necessary flags for your system will be used only as required for the specific package.

The PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable is understood both by CGO and by genbindings.

Further reading

• Guide to pkg-config

# Find where pkg-config looks for system libraries
$ pkg-config --variable pc_path pkg-config
/usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/share/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig