[tex-live] compiling TeXLive's `patgen' only

[Karl Berry]

Hi Werner,

    is there a recommended way to compile, say, `patgen' only? 

No, there is no easy way to compile a single "web2c" program :(.

It's been on my list for a couple of years. Maybe I'll get to it
someday. Of course, an autopatch would be welcome :). (My idea is
nothing fancy: have a new --disable-all-web2c-programs which disables
all the individual engines and other web2c programs; and then have
explicit enables for any that are lacking.)

    I tried

What you tried looks like about the best that can be done.

(Minor, and not related to libraries, but --disable-synctex will also
avoid building the synctex library+tool, I believe.)

    but this still compiles zillions of libraries...

My understanding is that the subdirs in libs/ are configured, but not
built.  This is the way Peter wrote the stuff originally.  Without
configuring the tree as present, many complications ensue.  I've tried
some variations and nothing has really improved the situation.

To go further than that:

The pdftex repository (in branches/stable) contains a cut-down TeX Live.
It has a similar configure incantation (in build-pdftex.sh). But, and
this is the interesting part, it only has those libraries which are
actually or potentially used by pdftex (libpng poppler xpdf zlib).

The configure && make (which are synced with TeX Live) still works,
because the _KPSE_RECURSE macro (in m4/kpse-setup.m4) only adds a subdir
to the list if -x libs/SUBDIR/configure. So I suppose you could avoid
the configure by renaming the configure file, though I can't say I've
tried it.

I know none of this is the right answer, but it's what I've got. --best, karl.