Package was not found in the pkg-config search path

Question

I am trying to install this package on ubuntu 18.04. The installation instructions say that the installation command should look like the following:

- autoreconf -i -f
- ./configure --with-libmaus2=${LIBMAUSPREFIX} \
    --prefix=${HOME}/biobambam2
- make install

The first line seems to work without any errors. When I try to run the second line like so:

./configure --with-libmaus2=/SOFT/libmaus2-2.0.794-release-20210706224245/ --prefix=/SOFT/biobambam2-2.0.182-release-20210412001032/

I get the following error:

configure: error: Package requirements (libmaus2 >= 2.0.774) were not met:

Package libmaus2 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libmaus2.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
Package 'libmaus2', required by 'world', not 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 libmaus2_CFLAGS
and libmaus2_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details.

I understand that ./configure does not see the library directory I provided, but I have no idea how to fix it.

Answer 1

you need to install correctly libmaus2 and set correctly PKG_CONFIG_PATH:

1. configure and compile libmaus2 this way: ./configure --prefix=/SOFT/libmaus2 && make -j8 install
2. export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/SOFT/libmaus2/lib/pkgconfig
3. ./configure --prefix=/SOFT/biobambam2 && make -j8 install

Answer 2

In general, install proper developer version of the library would work.

"Configure" searches the required library with something like:

    pkg-config --modversion libmaus2

Typically, Ubuntu distributes two versions: one is the normal lib. The other is a developer version with pc file and header files etc for pkg-config, and with added "-dev" to the pkg name. You can check available library as

    apt-cache search libmaus

that returns (on my system Ubuntu 22)

    libmaus2-2
    libmaus2-dev

If install libmaus2-dev, the pc file named libmaus2.pc would get installed to, for example, /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/libmaus2.pc Install libmaus2 would not get that.

If you have to build libmaus yourself and install to a path not in pkg-config search paths, do something like

    export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/special/path/to/pkgconfig:${PKG_CONFIG_PATH}

NOTE: Use the following to check pkg-config search paths:

    pkg-config --variable pc_path pkg-config