No package ‘x11-xcb’ found

So I am building KDE4.2 on FreeBSD 7.2 and I encounter the following error message;

gnome-config: not found
 No package 'x11-xcb' 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 DRIGL_CFLAGS and DRIGL_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.

Ok after a hell of a lot of searching around the net and trying just about everything, from updating my ports tree via portsnap and installing the latest version of pkg-config all of which did not solve the problem. I eventried comparing my system to my friend Mike’s umbuntu box over at culmination.org and still no love. His systems places the pkg-config data in /usr/lib/pkgcofig, however; this is definitely not the case with FreeBSD.

I looked in the usual places /usr/lib, /usr/libexec, /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/libexec but there’s nothing there, then an accidentally ran an ls on /usr/local and observed /usr/local/libdata. Eureka! I found the location very much by accident.

A quick look inside this directory and sure enough that is where the pkgconfig data is being stored. Ok so my initial  reaction was to execute the following;

set PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/libdata/pkgconfig

Obviously I could have searched the file system for check.pc as follows;

find / -name check.pc
 /usr/local/libdata/pkgconfig/check.pc

Unfortunatley this was not the quick fix that I’d hoped for. As it turns out the mysterious x11-xcb is nowhere to be found. I then triend a quick ln -s of xcb.pc x11-xcb.pc whichatleast got the build rolling once again. That is until it could not locate the necessary X11/Xlib-xcb.h and ground everything back to square one.

Well at this point the frustration level is rather high, as this nasty hack failed miserably. Thus I returned to my search and found a short reference in the freebsd forums about someone who tried to fix this byrebuilding libX11.

In the ports tree I jumped over to /usr/ports/x11/libX11 and began a make to install libX11-1.2.1 the missing library. Unfortunately this informed me that my xproto was stale.

Requested 'xproto >= 7.0.13' but the version of xproto is 7.0.10

So I updated that too. During this process I received the oops it’s already installed message an example of which follows;

===>   An older version of x11/xproto is already installed (xproto-7.0.10_1)
 You may wish to ``make deinstall'' and install this port again
 by ``make reinstall'' to upgrade it properly.
 If you really wish to overwrite the old port of x11/xproto
 without deleting it first, set the variable "FORCE_PKG_REGISTER"
 in your environment or the "make install" command line.
 *** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/x11/xproto.
 # make deinstall
 ===>  Deinstalling for x11/xproto
 ===>   Deinstalling xproto-7.0.10_1
 pkg_delete: package 'xproto-7.0.10_1' is required by these other packages
 and may not be deinstalled (but I'll delete it anyway):
 # make reinstall
 
 Of course libX11 also barked the same sort of oops it's already installed error message, so once again I performed the special make deinstall;make reinstall dance and now I am albel to jump back to my original kde4.2 build.

Ok so after several days of building KDE4.2 seems to be installed. It’s late in the day, and we shall have to try starting X tomorrow.