[Dev-luatex] build-latest-code-from-source instructions?

[Hans Hagen]

D. R. Evans wrote:
> Arthur Reutenauer said the following at 11/25/2009 02:58 PM :
>>> I'm sorry if I'm missing something obvious that I should already know.
>>   There's nothing you should already know, but you should be able to look up
>> that information by yourself.  Installation and distribution are far beyond the
>> scope of this mailing-list dedicated to LuaTeX developers (and there is a user
>> list, see http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/luatex).
>>
> 
> I was going to try to help with development -- at the very least by filing
> useful, detailed bug reports but probably by fixing stuff too -- (since I
> love TeX and have used C++ since before it was called that) but I had no
> idea that it would be so incredibly complicated just to install a current
> build in order to make a useful contribution.
> 
> I'll go away now. I apologize for interrupting.

if you look at the reguar tex source code base, you will notice that the 
luatex code base already is much simpler as the pascal -> c conversion 
is gone

for the rest: tex is not just a program, but also macros, fonts, and 
other resources and normally a distribution takes care of that, 
including updating formats and those concepts have not changes with 
luatex (although some aspects like fonts and patterns have)

concerning binaries ... right from the start of the luatex project there 
have always been recent binaries and therefore no need for doing 
compilation yourself

for what it's worth ... many context users use luatex in combination 
with a luatex aware version of context and updating to the latest 
greatest is pretty simple due to mostly automated updating of the tree 
and also quite some architectures are supported; the users' biggest 
problem might be that they are testing unstable (new) functionality ...

so, maybe starting at the binary-generating end of the game without some 
experience in updating a regular tex tree (including format generation) 
was not handy; also, having a binary is one thing, using the lua 
interfaces in luatex is yet another step

as texlive ships with the stable version of luatex, why don't you just 
install tex live 2009; dealing with betas is not a good idea if you are 
unfamiliar with luatex anyway

Hans


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