[texworks] [MacTeX] Call for Help: Mac builds

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 15 févr. 2011 à 22:38, Joseph Wright a écrit :

> Thanks for that Bruno. Of course, while this is fine for a single user,
> it does not help with the key questions:

Unfortunately I think that the steps mentioned in Jonathan's message <http://tug.org/pipermail/texworks/2011q1/003752.html> can't be avoided. Here's an attempt to formulate them in terms of your 3 questions.


> 1) How to get poppler to work without fontconfig

This seems to require a configure-time option, plus an update of the patches at <http://code.google.com/p/texworks/source/browse/trunk#trunk%2Fpoppler-patches>. Far from trivial, and requires a good knowledge of both poppler and OS X. The first I don't have, and the second only partially (UI OK, programming no).


> 2) How to remove the need for the Qt debug libraries

It seems likely that, if all the configuration options are fixed, the need for the debug libraries will go away.


> 3) What to do about universal binaries

Several problems arise:

- You need to relaunch the Xcode installer and select an option to install the 10.4 SDK, if the plan is to provide a version running on Tiger. I don't remember how the option is spelled out.

- You need to have access to Macs allowing 32- and 64-bit builds. I don't remember if the plan is to provide PPC builds; if this is the case, you need a PPC Mac.

- Jonathan mentioned "passing appropriate configure options or setting environment variables", such that the builds are universal, and Adam Maxwell on the MacTeX list was more specific: "you'll have to build the libraries for all architectures, then lipo them together (or take a chance and use the -arch option to gcc with multiple architectures)". This is far, far, far from trivial.

For example, here's how Dick Koch described to me, in an off-list message, the way he builds Ghostscript for inclusion in MacTeX. I don't think Dick will mind my posting his description here:

> As others reported, the standard
> 
> 	configure
> 	make
> 	sudo make install
> 
> works fine. I "blow away" my old /usr/local before doing this. Afterward,
> I only keep the contents of /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/share/ghostscript/8.71, and
> /usr/local/share/man. Ghostscript fonts aren't part of the standard distribution, so
> I find those separately on the internet and install in /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts.
> 
> The only tricky thing is something which won't interest you. I compile ghostscript eight times:
> 
> 	Intel Leopard (with X11)
> 	PPC Leopard (with X11)
> 	Intel Leopard (without X11)
> 	PPC Leopard (without X11)
> 
> 	Intel Tiger (with X11)
> 	PPC Panther (with X11)
> 	Intel Tiger (without X11)
> 	PPC Panther (without X11)
> 
> Then I lipo these together in pairs, and install the four binary files in /usr/local/bin.
> At installation time, I determine whether the machine has Leopard or an earlier system, and remove
> two of the four pairs. The end result is gs-X11 and gs-noX11 in /usr/local/bin.
> At install time, the symbolic link gs is created pointing to the correct binary depending
> on whether X11 is installed.

Not trivial!

On top of this (without the X11 or not X11 stuff, which is irrelevant for TeXworks), you'd need to also take care of providing both 32- and 64-bit binaries on architectures which support them (or choose between the two).


> I'm still stuck on (1) :-(

I must say I feel right now pretty pessimistic about the future of TeXworks on the Mac. With TeXShop already there, the motivation is not that high. Besides, I haven't used TeXworks myself in a very long time (lack of printing being a no-go as far as I'm concerned). Plus, most of the communication on the TeXworks list revolves around scripting, in which I'm not really interested, and otherwise to revolve around Windows issues, with a very active Windows user community.

Maybe the need to prepare MacTeX-2011 later this year will cause a Mac programmer to step in and provide up-to-date builds. Clearly we cannot ship any of the existing Mac builds in a future MacTeX, they're blatantly outdated.

Bruno