#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use ExtUtils::PkgConfig;

my %pango = ExtUtils::PkgConfig->find('pango');
my %pangocairo = ExtUtils::PkgConfig->find ('pangocairo'); 

my $libs = $pango{libs} ;
printf("libs = $libs|\n");

my $pclibs = $pangocairo{libs};
printf("pclibs = $pclibs|\n");

$libs .= $pclibs;
printf("libs = $libs|\n");
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Background: I'm a longtime gentoo linux user with two different systems both using testing (as opposed to stable). On one system I had an issue compiling Pango, on the other I didn't. I can't figure out why so I turn to the monks for help.

The problem was a missing space. On the system without problems the above code (adapted from the Makefile.PL from Pango for illustration) outputs this (the vertical bars are there to show the spaces)

libs = -lpango-1.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 |
pclibs = -lpangocairo-1.0 -lpango-1.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 -lcairo
+ |
libs = -lpango-1.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 -lpangocairo-1.0 -lpango-1
+.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 -lcairo |
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but on the other system, using the same version of ExtUtils::PkgConfig and anything else relevant I could think of (perl-5.20 for instance) the output was missing the spaces at the end causing the last line to smash together the "-lglib-2.0 -lpangocairo-1.0" bit into one piece and causing a compile error.

libs = -lpango-1.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0|
pclibs = -lpangocairo-1.0 -lpango-1.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 -lcairo
+|
libs = -lpango-1.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0-lpangocairo-1.0 -lpango-1.
+0 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 -lcairo|
[download]

Can anyone tell me what the heck is going on? I am at a complete loss as to where to look for the problem, which started around 2-3 months ago. Before that the same code worked as expected.