./configure fails on Solaris 11 express (without pkg-config)

[oh_noes]

Solaris 11 Express, 64bit

pkg install gcc-dev
download curl source
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/curl && make && make install
download libevent source
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/libevent && make && make install

then

download 2.22 or 2.30b4 source
 CFLAGS="-L/usr/local/libevent/lib -R/usr/local/libevent/lib" CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/libevent/include -I/usr/local/curl/include" LIBEVENT_LIBS="-L/usr/local/libevent/lib -R/usr/local/libevent/lib -levent -lrt" LIBEVENT_CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/libevent/include" LIBCURL_CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/curl/include" LIBCURL_LIBS="-L/usr/local/curl/lib -lcurl -lidn -lssl -lcrypto -lldap -lsocket -lnsl -lz" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/transmission --enable-daemon --enable-cli --disable-nls --disable-mac --disable-gtk

Failed with:

$ ./configure -q
configure: error: in `/home/username/transmission-2.22':
configure: error: The pkg-config script could not be found or is too old.  Make sure it
is in your PATH or set the PKG_CONFIG environment variable to the full
path to pkg-config.

Alternatively, you may set the environment variables LIBCURL_CFLAGS
and LIBCURL_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details.

To get pkg-config, see <http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig>.
See `config.log' for more details

Workaround

    ln -s /bin/true /usr/bin/pkg-config

More info here: ​https://forum.transmissionbt.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11711&p=54259#p54259

Cause

To me it looks like even though the environment variables exist, the configure script on s11 only checks them after it looks for pkg-config which doesn't exist.

[jordan]

That error message is coming from the PKG_CHECK_MODULES macro which is handled upstream by the pkg-config maintainers, rather than Transmission. All Transmission is doing is this:

PKG_CHECK_MODULES(LIBCURL, [libcurl >= $CURL_MINIMUM])

So this appears to be a bug in the pkg-config macro. You may want to report this upstream -- according to ​http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config, pkg-config uses the bug tracker at ​https://bugs.freedesktop.org/