[tex-live] lltxplatform integration

[Karl Berry]

Hi Elie,

    Is it possible to integrate lltxplatform
    (https://www.ctan.org/pkg/lualatex-platform) into TeXLive? 

Anything is possible, but ...

    It is a compiled package for Lua, and produces lltxplatform.so or
    lltxplatform.dll. This file should go where luatex can find it, so
    according to CLUAINPUTS, texlive-bin/lua/ should do.

Taco and I defined CLUAINPUTS a couple years ago but it has never been
used in TL.  That is, TL has never included any dynamic libraries,
whether related to luatex or otherwise, for a plethora of reasons.

Before we include any such .so, there should be an option in luatex
about loading .so's (maybe it already exists?), and the default has to
be off.  Otherwise our efforts at security are lost, so far as I can see.

Which means, it seems to me, that the feature is only useful for
particular users doing particular things, not for shipping stuff to be
used by everyone.

As I understand it, ConTeXt gets the list of OS fonts by running a
script at install time, or really mtxrun --generate time.  I expect we
could figure out something similar for lualatex.  Ideally even re-using
the same file if it exists ...

Overall, I think just about any alternative -- a script, a system call,
a whole separate program, whatever -- is preferable to a .so.

    Also, what's the policy about these binary packages? Are they updated
    once a year like other binaries, or when they land in CTAN, like usual
    packages?

They'd only be updated once a year, or more precisely when the binaries
are updated.  There is no miracle way to get them compiled on all
platforms on demand, and I don't want to impose repeated recompiling on
our builders (or manage such an effort).  I also expect it will take
quite some effort to get figure out the first one.

karl