Error installing plugin

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On Thu, 5 Feb 2004, John Shane wrote:

> <snip>
> checking for bind_textdomain_codeset... (cached) yes
> checking for locales directory... ${prefix}/share/locale
> checking for pkg-config... no
> *** The pkg-config script could not be found. Make sure it is
> *** in your path, or set the PKG_CONFIG environment variable
> *** to the full path to pkg-config.
> *** Or see http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig to get pkg-config.
> configure: error: Library requirements (xfce4-panel-1.0 >= 3.99.2) not met;
> consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if your 
> libraries are in a nonstandard prefix so pkg-config can find them.

that error is a bit misleading actually.  your problem is not that the 
libraries are in a nonstandard prefix, the problem is that the 
pkg-config script isn't installed, and it can't even begin to find the 
libraries.

> I have a RH9 system. I installed Xfce4 using RPMs and am aware that 
> the directories used are slightly different from the source defaults. 
> I set my PKG_CONFIG_PATH variable using "export 
> PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig"  When I check env PKG_CONFIG_PATH 
> is pointing to the right directory with the xfce4 *.pc files.  I also 
> went to the freedesktop site and downloaded the pkg-config tarball and 
> tried to install it.  "Tried" is the operative word there.  I don't 
> think I got it right though because I still can't get the plugins to 
> work.

your directory listings show that the rh9 rpms installed xfce in /usr, 
so you shouldn't need to mess with the PKG_CONFIG_PATH env var.  what 
you should do is get an RPM for pkg-config and install that.  i found 
the one that comes with RH9 on rpmfind.net:
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/9/en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS/pkgconfig-0.14.0-3.i386.rpm

that's not the latest version, but that shouldn't matter and should work 
for you.  before you install it, if you have the configured source tree 
still around for the pkg-config you downloaded and tried to install 
yourself, try running 'make uninstall' (as root) in that source 
directory to remove any random files that have the potential to conflict 
with the RPM (but if you can't do this, it should still be ok).

if you opt to update to the version of pkg-config that you downloaded 
from freedesktop.org, make sure you install it like:
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
su -c 'make install'  (or sudo make install or whatever)

good luck,
brian