libgpod: configure failure: 'libplist' not found with pkgconfig

[mascguy (Christopher Nielsen)]

It's not clear how many macOS releases this port is failing to build for, as the history has aged out. However, I can confirm that it's failing for Big Sur, based on recent buildbot attempts. I've also tested locally with macOS 10.13, with identical failures to what's occurring on our builders.

Of note, I'm seeing numerous failures in the configure log.

Plus these two key failures in main.log, with the caveat that they may simply be side-effects of earlier configure failures:

:info:configure checking for glib-2.0 >= 2.16.0 gobject-2.0 sqlite3 libplist >= 1.0 gmodule-2.0... no
:info:configure configure: error: Package requirements (glib-2.0 >= 2.16.0 gobject-2.0 sqlite3 libplist >= 1.0 gmodule-2.0) were not met:
:info:configure No package 'libplist' found

Both logs attached, for local 10.13 build attempt.

Big Sur x86_64 build log available here:

​https://build.macports.org/builders/ports-11_x86_64-builder/builds/14953/steps/install-port/logs/stdio

This failure is blocking downstream ports from building. Is anyone interested in taking a look?

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

So if pkg-config --cflags libplist doesn't work, that's most likely an issue with libplist.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

I can't think of a reason why this would work on 10.15; it shouldn't work on any system because it is looking for a "libplist" pkg-config file, but the libplist port doesn't provide one; it provides a "libplist-2.0" pkg-config file. Presumably this version of libgpod is only compatible with libplist version 1, which we don't have in MacPorts anymore since 2018. I think we're already using the latest version of libgpod. So we either need to find or develop a patch to make libgpod compatible with libplist 2, or we need to reintroduce a port for libplist 1 and make libgpod use that.

[mascguy (Christopher Nielsen)]

Sorry for the confusion relative to the 10.15 build, that was based on a cursory look at the port's status page. It turns out that the last 10.15 build was from 2019.

Updated the ticket description accordingly.

[barracuda156]

If no one is interested in fixing libplist itself, it is possible to tweak port which use it.

No package 'libplist' found

Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.

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

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

What do you mean fixing libplist? It's not broken.