vcpkg is now difficult to use.

[cmaughan]

The latest vcpkg for tomlplusplus now requires pkgconfig, which is a seperate install on windows. Previously I could just add tomlplusplus to my CMakelists.txt. I tried adding the extra PkgConfig stuff, and tried to install the extra findpackage binaries on windows, but gave up. I've just copied tomlplusplus into my tree.

[marzer]

Ah that sucks. I don't know much about vcpkg but I'll look into at some point. Thanks for letting me know :)

[davidharabagiu]

Installing pkgconfig using choco worked for me:

choco install pkgconfiglite

You could also use the vcpkg port for toml++ 3.1.0 which doesn't require PkgConfig.

[cdacamar]

Is there any way of reverting the offending change? Taking a dependency on PkgConfig for a straight-forward library (it's usable as header-only) seems like massive overkill.

[gkoreman]

+1 to this. The PkgConfig dependency on vcpkg seriously detracts from the allure of a header only library.

[user-45-20]

As far as I can tell this is because natively tomlplusplus uses meson instead of CMake, and while meson does have support for generating targets files that can be consumed by CMake, there are some issues with that in the current version of tomlplusplus, so I guess the vcpkg maintainers decided not to bother.

One obvious issue I found is this in src/meson.build: lib_name = tomlplusplus_lib.full_path().split('/')[-1] - on Windows the path separator is \ so you end up with an absolute path in lib_name which is then put into the CMake targets file. I remember there being more issues though.

For anyone else who runs into this, as a workaround you can either pin your vcpkg version of the library at 3.2.0 which didn't have this problem, or to use the latest 3.4.0 release, you can create an overlay portfile which builds and installs the library through CMake instead as the project still has CMakeLists.txt:

vcpkg_from_github(
    OUT_SOURCE_PATH SOURCE_PATH
    REPO marzer/tomlplusplus
    REF v3.4.0
    SHA512 c227fc8147c9459b29ad24002aaf6ab2c42fac22ea04c1c52b283a0172581ccd4527b33c1931e0ef0d1db6b6a53f9e9882c6d4231c7f3494cf070d0220741aa5
    HEAD_REF "v${VERSION}"
)

vcpkg_cmake_configure(SOURCE_PATH "${SOURCE_PATH}")

vcpkg_cmake_install()
vcpkg_cmake_config_fixup(CONFIG_PATH lib/cmake/tomlplusplus)

file(REMOVE_RECURSE "${CURRENT_PACKAGES_DIR}/debug")
# this is created but useless as the library is header only, so we get a warning
file(REMOVE_RECURSE "${CURRENT_PACKAGES_DIR}/lib")

vcpkg_install_copyright(FILE_LIST "${SOURCE_PATH}/LICENSE")

[dg0yt]

The vcpkg port used meson since it was added in 2020. I didn't see a request to change to CMake. Does CMake in tomlplusplus continue to be supported?

And IIUC, CMake in tomlplusplus doesn't create a pc file.

[purplefishies]

Just checking what the status on this fix was to not rely on pkg-config ?

[dg0yt]

Looks like nobody want to invest time to contribute cmake config, even "for a straight-forward library (it's usable as header-only)".

And it is not difficult at all to install pkg-config on Windows: there is a port pkgconf.

[dg0yt]

And CMake now added preliminary native pkgconfig support...

[dg0yt]

The vcpkg port now installs the cmake config with meson. Extra fixup was needed for file names and multi-config. microsoft/vcpkg#44838.