[tex-live] TeXLive (Windows) bash script -> exe

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 3:39 PM, Josef Kleber wrote:
> Hi,
>
> i wrote a bash script osmimage
> (http://jklatex.square7.de/download/osmimage), which downloads an
> OpenStreetMap specified by options.
>
> Furthermore, i plan to write a LaTeX package, which uses this script via
> \write18 (see:
> http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/178883/write18-encoding).
>
> The Windows version of TeXLive can not execute bash scripts as such. But i
> know you can provide a xxx.exe which executes the bash script xxx

This means that somebody needs to have sufficient time and motivation
to actually rewrite your program in another programming language and
compile it. There is no magic compiler to turn the bash code into an
executable.

> Is it enough to kindly ask that you create such an exe or is there something
> i can do?

Yes, you can rewrite the program in lua and execute it with texlua.

If not lua, it could be python, perl, ruby, ... but this means that
windows users will need to install support for that programming
language separately which will make your script less portable.

Or you could write in in C/C++, but that brings other problems.

If you write your script in lua, it will be guaranteed to work on all
operating systems.

> The script is not very fancy: command line options -> set defaults -> some
> checks -> construct URL -> wget

Precisely for that matter it would be nice if you could rewrite the
script. There are many examples in ConTeXt, in
texmf-dist/scripts/texlive/lua/texlive and probablly elsewhere, but
you could ask for help if you have problems.

Mojca