Description of problem: The "Libs.private" field in the .pc files is interpreted by the pkg-config tool in a different way than what's described in the man pages. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): pkgconfig-0.28-9.fc23.x86_64 How reproducible: 100% Steps to Reproduce: 1. have a .pc file e.g. with 'Libs.private: -lrt' 2. try to build something requiring that package Actual results: Package 'librt', required by SOME_PACKAGE, not found Expected results: Only the librt.so file being checked/searched for as 'man pkg-config' describes: Libs.private: This line should list any private libraries in use. Private libraries are libraries which are not exposed through your library, but are needed in the case of static linking. This differs from Requires.private in that it references libraries that do not have package files installed. and also in the metadata file syntax description: Libs.private: -lm Additional info: an example of the above issue is current 'devmapper.pc' file
Turns out this was caused by a bug in device-mapper-devel the devmapper.pc file of which had 'librt' in 'Requires.private' and not in 'Libs.private'. I checked the file from last Rawhide build in Koji, but an older rawhide package was installed in our testing infrastructure hitting the issue described in this report. Thus I'm closing this bug as WORKSFORME, sorry for the noise.