[tex-live] [luatex] lltxplatform integration

Élie Roux elie.roux at telecom-bretagne.eu
Thu Jun 4 11:12:53 CEST 2015


> The swiglib project 
> swiglib.foundry.supelec.fr <http://swiglib.foundry.supelec.fr>
> tries to address these problems.
> My current opinion is to avoid to include dynamic shared object (ie
> so/dll files) in TeXLive
> and  set  a path inside the TDS .

Why not, but this means that if some documents rely on external
libraries, users won't be able to compile them, especially under Windows
where it requires very advanced knowledge to compile anything. So this
means that LuaTeX will never be able to use harfbuzz, etc.  This means
that if someone wants to experiment on harfbuzz (change harfbuzz for
anything here) will have to fork LuaTeX, statically compile harfbuzz
against it, and distribute "luatex-harfbuzz", same for all other useful
libraries...

> ConTeXt already has a mechanism to load dso
> (see 3.1 Application module location in the TDS
> https://swiglib.foundry.supelec.fr/tb112/tb112scarso.html)
> and it works quite well.

Loading dynamic libraries is currently quite easy indeed.

> A command line switches as  --disable-write18  and --shell-restricted
> currently are not implemented 
> but could be in the future (luajittex is more problematic), 

That would be helpful... But I suppose that mean that you'll have to
link against -ltexlua (name to be defined) instead of -llua52, because
linking against -llua52 will never provide kpse-restricted funtions
right? That sounds reasonable...

> if we keep the modules outside the TeXLive 

Does it mean ConTeXt users will have all the nice swig modules, while
TeXLive users won't? Seems a bit unfair... This also means that TeXLive
will have a reduced ConTeXt?

> then they are optionals --- i.e. the user chooses to install them --- 
> and the developer has the responsibility to fix the problems.

But this also means that the average user can't install them (installing
such a thing under Windows is way beyond average Windows user's
ability). Even distributing shared libaries for LuaTeX through luarocks
and asking users to install them is, I believe, confusing for the
average user...

Thank you,
-- 
Elie


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