See #3976, #3713, and #3622

@Autodrive Sorry, reading that message after I posted it comes across as way more hostile than I intended!

That message is mostly notes the other devs.

From your first comment, I could learn about prior similar ones.

@Autodrive Yes, but I should have been friendlier about it.

@tacaswell - you missed #3363, which also deals with Freetype (specifically getting the correct version string).

@Autodrive - I think it might be helpful if you could provide a PR which shows the kind of thing you had in mind (it doesn't have to be complete, just something to give focused feedback - it may be that by doing that we get some more information on the problem).

Cheers!

On Mac there is an issue when pkg config is not installed. I tried fixing it in #3713 but it breaks other stuff.
We need to refactor and generalise the code a bit to make it possible to search more directories. It's been on my list of stuff that I want to fix for a long time. Just haven't gotten around to it.

@pelson May I have your opinion based on which commit I should prepare a pull request? 1.4.2 (3a828dd)? Or any other?

May I have your opinion based on which commit I should prepare a pull request?

I can't give a definitive answer. If your change would be invasive, I'd target the master branch, otherwise if this is a bugfix with little impact other than making a specific case better, then the v1.4.x branch would be the target.

Stick it against master for now, and we can always back port.

Cheers,

Definitely against master. @efiring made a compelling case that 1.4.3 should be the last maintenance release and we should just start working on 1.5 now.

Based on the linked issues, I think pkg-config is now required building Matplotlib, and the old fallback of freetype-config is just broken, so the only course of action is to install pkg-config.