Hi Christian

I would like to include texmfstart.exe in the MiKTeX distribution, but I don't know how to build texmfstart.exe. Is there a simple recipe (Makefile) I can start with?

I'm switching from perl to ruby, so texmfstart is a ruby script. Say that the next code is put in ruby2exe.cmd, then i can make a binary with: ruby2exe texmfstart which comes down to packaging the needed libraries + ruby core into an 'exe'. It uses exerb. @echo off if exist "%~n1.rb" goto run goto usage :run set exerbrubypath=c:\data\system\ruby.1.8.2 %exerbrubypath%\bin\ruby.exe -r exerb/mkexr %~n1.rb %2 %exerbrubypath%\bin\exerb.exe -v -C %exerbrubypath%\share\exerb\ruby182c.exc %~n1.exr del /q %~n1.exr %~n1.mak goto end :usage echo usage: ruby2exe filename :end the rest of the programs, like texexec, will be started using texmfstart then (which assumes ruby to be present on the system; if not, then one needs to make texexec into an exe as well; there is a list of stubs in the latest context distribution (scripts/context/stubs/...); not all of them are needed, e.g. texutil is now integrated into texexec) i use common libraries to figure out the paths, and i hope that i did the miktex handling right; (i'd like to test miktex using my own trees, but it's kind of hard to set the additional trees that i use); anyhow, in the ruby variants it's more easy for me to handle miktex; for the moment it assumes kpsewhich to be present, but i can as well call another database program) Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------