pkg-config --libs

Within modern software development, one should be advised to use pkg-config as soon as it is available. The pkg-config helper can handle a lot of problems that can usually come up with linking to third party libraries in case that those link again dynamically with other libraries themselves. It does correctly order the list of "libs", it can throw away duplicate "-L" hints, and same for cflags "-I" hints, plus it will throw away some sys-includes that gcc3.2 will warn about with a false positive.

There is a number of pkg-config targets installed in the system but the one you want to use is pkg-config zziplib. Therefore, a simple Makefile could read like

    PROGRAM = my_prog
    CFLAGS = -Dhappy `pkg-config zziplib --cflags`
    LIBS   = -Wl,-E  `pkg-config zziplib --libs`

    my_prog.o : my_prog.c
       $(CC) $(CFLAGS) $< -o $@
    my_prog : my_prog.o
       $(LINK) $< $(LIBS)
  

The `pkg-config zziplibs --libs` will usually expand to something like -lzzip -lz which are the two (!!) libraries that you need to link with - in that order. The zziplib builds on top of the z-lib algorithms for compression of files within the zip-archive. That's the same for other lib-parts of the zziplib project as well, e.g. the sdl-rwops part which does also need to link with the sdl-lib - and that's where the pkg-config infrastructure can be of great help. That's the reason why zziplib installs a few more ".pc" files, you can get a list of them like this:

   $ pkg-config --list-all | sort | grep zzip
   zziplib               zziplib - ZZipLib - libZ-based ZIP-access Library
   zzip-sdl-config       zzip-sdl-config - SDL Config (for ZZipLib)
   zzip-sdl-rwops        zzip-sdl-rwops - SDL_rwops for ZZipLib
   zzipwrap              zzipwrap - Callback Wrappers for ZZipLib
   zzip-zlib-config      zzip-zlib-config - ZLib Config (for ZZipLib)
   

The two entries like "zzip-sdl-config" and "zzip-zlib-config" happen to be ".pc" files for the libz.so and libSDL.so that were seen at configure-time of zziplib - you may want to reuse these in your projects as well whenever you need to link to either of zlib or libsdl even in places where there is no direct need for zziplib. It basically looks like:

   $ pkg-config zzip-zlib-config --modversion
   1.1.4
   $ pkg-config zzip-zlib-config --libs      
    -lz  
   

zzip-config

The pkg-config ".pc" files are relativly young in the history of zziplib. A long time before that there was the `zzip-config` script installed in the system. These `*-config` were common before the pkg-config came about, and in fact the pkg-config infrastructure was invented to flatten away the problems of using multiple `*-config` scripts for a project. As long as you do not combine multiple `*-config`s then it should be well okay to use the `zzip-config` directly - it does also kill another dependency on the `pkg-config` tool to build your project, the zziplib is all that's needed.

In its call-structure the `zzip-config` script uses the same options as `pkg-config`, (well they are historic cousins anyway). and that simply means you can replace each call above like `pkg-config zziplib...` with `zzip-config...`.

    PROGRAM = my_prog
    CFLAGS = -Dhappy `zzip-config --cflags`
    LIBS   = -Wl,-E  `zzip-config --libs`

    my_prog.o : my_prog.c
       $(CC) $(CFLAGS) $< -o $@
    my_prog : my_prog.o
       $(LINK) $< $(LIBS)
  

Be informed that the zzip-config script is low-maintained and starting with 2004 it will be replaced with a one-line script that simply reads `pkg-config zziplib $*`. By that time the rpm/deb packages will also list "pkgconfig" as a dependency on the zziplib-devel/zziplib-dev part.

autoconf macro

There is currently an autoconf macro installed along into the usual /usr/share/aclocal space for making it easier for you to pick up the configure-time cflags/libs needed to build/link with zziplib. In any way it does look like this:

  dnl PKG_CHECK_ZZIPLIB(ZSTUFF, min-version, action-if, action-not)
  AC_DEFUN([PKG_CHECK_ZZIPLIB],[dnl
  PKG_CHECK_MODULES([$1], [zziplib $2], [$3], [$4])])
  

You are strongly advised to take advantage of the pkgconfig's macro directly - you can find the macro in /usr/share/aclocal/pkg.m4 and it allows to combine the flags of a list of library modules that you want to have. If it is only zziplib, than you could simply use this in your configure.ac:

  PKG_CHECK_MODULES([ZZIP],[zziplib >= 0.10.75])
  

which will provide you with two autoconf/automake variables named ZZIP_CFLAGS and ZZIP_LIBS respectivly.

Up to 2004, the macro in zziplib.m4 will be however carry a copy of the pkg.m4 so that you do not need another dependency for your software project. The macro is called like shown above PKG_CHECK_ZZIPLIB and you would call it like
     PKG_CHECK_ZZIPLIB([ZZIP],[0.10.75])
which will give you the two autoconf/automake variables as well, ZZIP_CFLAGS and ZZIP_LIBS