hi all.........I recently compiled GTK on my system and everyting went fine but when i try to compile GTK apps like Xchat or GAim.........the configure file cant find GTK..........
no previous version of GTK was on this system..........and I installed with --preffix=/usr
I ran ldconfig -v as root and tried : export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig both as root and underpriveleged user.........echo $PKG_CONFIG_PATH gives me /usr/lib/pkgconfig but if i log off the system and back on echo $PKG_CONFIG_PATH gives me a blank line.(I want the change to be permanent so I dont have to keep entering the pkg_config_path)...........any thing im missing?, or forgetting? my /etc/ld.so.config file has /usr/X11R6/lib
/usr/local/lib
/usr/lib

Im sure its something simple im forgetting...........Ive searched everywhere and all I can find Is what ive already done.........
thanks in advance

pkg-config only knows one path on it's own and that is the ./lib/pkgconfig that corespongs to it's prefix
everything else you add
there are some very sophisticated ways to set stuff like this up like having the system automatically search for stuff at boot but the esiest is to

just put it in ~/.bash_profile

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig

and whatever else you need in there

if you change .bash_profile rather than log out and back in again to make the changes take effect just type
source ~/.bash_profile
if you need it when you do "su" just put a line in ~/.bash_profile
if [ `whoami` = "root" ]; then
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
fi

and if you need it if you login as root of course put it in /root/.bash_profile

theres always more than one way to skin a cat........thanks for the info ..........it helped alot........