[Haskell-cafe] Cabal, xmonad-contrib, X11-xft, pkg-config ... questioning my sanity

[Jacek Generowicz]

In short: I can't cabal install xmonad-contrib.

Longer version:

It a appears that a program which does not exist on my computer seems  
to insist on a package version which does not exist in my universe,  
I'm starting to wonder whether I have lost my marbles. Could some kind  
soul please point me in some sensible direction?


cabal install xmonad-contrib
Resolving dependencies...
Configuring X11-xft-0.3...
cabal: pkg-config version >=0.9.0 is required but it could not be found.
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
X11-xft-0.3 failed during the configure step. The exception was:
ExitFailure 1
xmonad-contrib-0.9.1 depends on X11-xft-0.3 which failed to install.


cabal install x11-xft
Resolving dependencies...
Configuring X11-xft-0.3...
cabal: pkg-config version >=0.9.0 is required but it could not be found.
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
X11-xft-0.3 failed during the configure step. The exception was:
ExitFailure 1


X11-xft version 0.9.0 doesn't even exist, as far a I can tell: 0.3  
seems to be the highest. So what is making cabal believe that such a  
version is needed? Is it pkg-config?

I'm not at all familiar with pkg-config, and, as far as I can tell  
it's not even installed on the Mac on which I am trying to do this.  
Curiously, its man page *does* work (it's in /usr/X11/man, for some  
reason). Does Cabal have some sort of embedded pkg-config?