[Dev-luatex] compile flags in luatex

[Karl Berry]

    sure, but what always puzzled me is the close connection between a texmf 
    tree and binaries; 

The fmt files will still embed pool checksums (among other things) so
can't be arbitrarily swapped around with different binaries.  Other than
that, I think it would basically work to use a binary from one release
and a tree from another, not that I've ever tried it (or see much reason
to).  Obviously 99% of the macros are independent of the particular
binary.

    this may have changed now that we no longer have a 
    dependency (i.e. no pool file any more)

Indeed, that is a good advance.

    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?)

It sure would, but knuth's tex & mf, plus omega and aleph will never be
converted.  So as long as we distribute Knuth's tex ...

BTW, do you think aleph can become a symlink to luatex?!

karl