I have been trying to install some xmms plugins in vain for the last few days (weeks?). The problem is that the configure says that I do not have GLIB 1.2.2 or GTK 1.2.2 installed on my system. However I installed all gtk and glib packages available in YaST. I tried to install the rpms and sources I managed to find in the Internet, but nothing helps. I know that there was a number of similar topics here but no suitable solution. Any help?

I've had similar problems with gtk, glib, pango and various others in SuSE 9.1 repeatedly. SuSE installed the rpms to a non-standard location (/opt instead of /usr or /usr/local) and did not correctly sign them up with pkg-config (or hid pkg-config in /opt where configure routines couldn't find it).

I've used symlinks in /usr and /usr/local pointing to the corresponding /opt locations, and newer versions of such libraries compiled from source (which then end up where configure routines seem to expect them), and in some cases I've written stub *.pc files for pkg-config in order to get things running correctly.

Robin

thanks, but it sounds quite complicated for me

I think I will manage symlinks, although I am not sure if I know all the files/folders I have to link, but "stub *.pc" is absolute Greek to me. Any chance to write a brief how-to?

Ok, I'm writing this from memory, I'm not on a Linux machine right now, so forgive me if there are any errors. I can check the info later, if things don't work.

First, only if configure says something about adding the path to, say, glib.pc to your PKG_CONFIG_PATH variable, or something like that, do you need to worry about *.pc files.

Pkg-config is a program which keeps information about various libraries in a central organization, usually in /usr/lib/pkg-config, but it could be in /opt/lib/pkg-config, too. You'll have to find out, where that directory is. The correct directory contains lots of files with the extension .pc.

Now, if there actually is a file called something like glib.pc or whatever is missing in that directory, but configure doesn't find it, then you can either actually add that directory to your PKG_CONFIG_PATH variable, or you can put a symlink to the directory into /usr/lib and /usr/local/lib - these are in the variable already. (Test by entering 'echo $PKG_CONFIG_PATH' at a command line).

If there is no such file in the directory and you can't find it anywhere else, you'll have to make one yourself or compile glib new from source. I personally have no idea what information the correct glib.pc file has, but if you look at any *.pc file you'll quickly find out how it works. There are paths to certain directories, a very important version number (set it to at least that which your program is looking for, but make sure you actually have a working version, too), and various information about dependencies, which I always leave out - after all I'm lying through my teeth anyway when I write my own .pc files. Most of the time that works quite well.

In order to make a working pc file I usually just copy one that already exists, give it the name the configure process tells me it expects, and adjust the data about paths and version number, and delete all the other entries, especially dependencies.

Robin