[luatex] LuaTeX as a Library

[Mojca Miklavec]

Hi,

On 19 November 2017 at 17:47, Nicolas Holzschuch wrote:
>
> If you're not compiling for iOS, you will need to edit the Makefiles a bit. I'm open to suggestions in
> how to make the changes more compatible with other platforms.

Sorry for being totally off-topic, but some random thoughts ...

- (It would be a lot easier for you to work with patches if luatex
development would switch to git. You patches become hard to track as
LuaTeX keeps changing. It might be easier to work if someone would
make a git repository tracking subversion and updating the repository
on regular basis, so that your patches in a special feature branch
could be clearly distinguished from upstream changes.)

- Independent of whether or not that ever happens: it would help a lot
if you send patches like "fixing a million memory leaks" to Luigi, so
that he would incorporate them and they would end up upstream. Then
you would only need to keep track of other, more non-straightforward
patches needed to reach your goal.

- I assume that many cases where "#ifdef __IPHONE__" is used are not
really specific to IPHONE, but to the way a library works and would be
just as well needed on Android or any other device where the "start
once and flush everything" paradigm isn't the most suitable one. So
the patches *may* need a bit more tweaking. (But tweaking them would
be a lot easier if the first two points would be addressed.)

- Regarding the need for editing Makefile-s. I recently discovered an
awesome cross-platform build tool called meson. Porting the sources to
meson would probably require a whole lot of work, but if this was ever
done, it would be an awesome simplification of the current build
system that would also work natively on Windows (as well as other
platforms, including iPhone). Changing raw Makefiles is super tedious
and non-repeatable, but doing the right minor change in the build
specification will make your changes work correctly on all platforms
"for free".

Mojca