[geos-devel] [GEOS] #1015: Update geos-config tool for consistency

[Greg Troxel]

This seems to explain how to accomodate spaces in pathnames and escaping
them, sticking to POSIX

  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12162010/posix-sh-equivalent-for-bash-s-printf-q

cmake is very much set up to use pkg-config; it has become the normal
way by which build systems query how to link to dependency packages.  I
don't think it has anything to do with Visual Studio in a cmake build.
I don't know anything about cmake on windows, but it doesn't make sense
that this would be trouble since it is so pervasive.  But I could be off.

  That said even if we did go down the path of pkgsrc I think we need to
  support geos-config for a couple of minor versions to give libraries
  that depend on GEOS time to change.  For example PostGIS expects a
  geos-config file.  So we'd have to change all supported versions to
  allow .pc for geos.

(pkg-config not pkgsrc, assuming word-o).  Yes, would need some compat
and switchover.  Many programs have moved from foo-config to a .pc over
the years.  On my system I have only 65 foo-config programs, compared to
to 557 pkgconfig files (both in /usr/pkg, so that is an apples to apples
comparison).

I am pretty sure there is an idiom which looks like

  try to find geos via pc
  if not, try geos-config

at least in autoconf that was a fairly normal thing to do for a while.

I will observe that a strategy of:

   add pkgconfig more or less now

   decline to worry about spaces in prefix in geos-config (tell people
   that want to put spaces in pathnames that to use pkgconfig ;-)

seems reasonable to me.   But I have no objection to accomodating spaces
if it doesn't add a bash or other dependency.