[Dev-luatex] compile flags in luatex

[Hans Hagen]

Karl Berry wrote:

> On every other platform, it already does build out of the box so far as
> I know.  One of my hopes is that we will be able to adapt Taco's cross
> compiling so that we can build all the Windows binaries that way.
> Jonathan is looking towards that for his new front-end.

that would be great indeed

> Given the constraints of operating from a language that was dead for
> systems programming in 1980, a software engineering methodology that
> forbids us from modifying the original source (tex.web), a bewildering
> array of programs and authors each of whom likes to do things in their
> own way (web vs. cweb vs. (c)tie vs. C vs. C++ vs. shell scripts vs. Lua
> vs. ...), and almost none of whom have any interest in configuration
> issues, I'd say it's more amazing that it builds on every known platform
> with, really, minimal trouble for people.

sure, i understand that ... one of the thing is hope for is that 
eventually we will have everything in portable c

> If you have any practical suggestions for how to make the build simpler,
> believe me, I'd love to hear it.  TL is pretty much unique in the free
> software world, in that we provide precompiled and relocatable binaries
> and a runnable tree of thousands upon thousands of files for N
> platforms.  You can't expect it all to come for free.  And you can't
> just wave your hands and say we don't need it.  

sure, but what always puzzled me is the close connection between a texmf 
tree and binaries; this may have changed now that we no longer have a 
dependency (i.e. no pool file any more)

> Sorry, but when I hear about how horrible the TeX sources are, I get to
> feeling a bit defensive!

no problem; i'd not have mentioned it if i'd not knew you; its' just 
that i wonder what history we still carry that makes live problematic 
while maybe we can drop part of that history (say that all pascal 
sources are turned into c ... that would simplify things, wouldn't it?)

Hans

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