pkg-config [--modversion] [--help] [--print-errors] [--silence-errors] [--cflags] [--libs] [--libs-only-L] [--libs-only-l] [--cflags-only-I] [--variable=VARIABLENAME] [--define-variable=VARIABLENAME=VARIABLEVALUE] [--uninstalled] [--exists] [--atleast-version=VERSION] [--exact-version=VERSION] [--max-version=VERSION] [LIBRARIES...]

The pkg-config program is used to retrieve information about installed libraries in the system. It is typically used to compile and link against one or more libraries. Here is a typical usage scenario in a Makefile:

program: program.c
        cc program.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs gnomeui`

pkg-config retrieves information about packages from special metadata files. These files are named after the package, with the extension .pc. By default, pkg-config looks in the directory prefix/lib/pkgconfig for these files; it will also look in the colon-separated (on Windows, semicolon-separated) list of directories specified by the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable.

The package name specified on the pkg-config command line is defined to be the name of the metadata file, minus the .pc extension. If a library can install multiple versions simultaneously, it must give each version its own name (for example, GTK 1.2 might have the package name "gtk+" while GTK 2.0 has "gtk+-2.0").