[tlbuild] linking against expat ... why

[Karl Berry]

    With Martin we have worked something out:

Ok, glad to hear it.  I'll try to remake the i386-linux xetex that way.
(What a pain, though.)

    In principle using this method we could even compile libfontconfig
    statically into the binary.

No.  We could have done that in the first place (would have been much
simpler, too).  The whole point of this exercise is to dynamically link
fontconfig, because otherwise there is little hope of a
libfontconfig from version X of distro A working on version Y of distro B.

Jonathan looked into this when we were first incorporating xetex into
TL, because we knew the dynamic linking of fontconfig was going to be a
big problem, but concluded there was no good alternative.  He came up
with a couple of specific problematic cases.  Of course I don't remember
the details any more or even what year this was for the archives, but
that was the conclusion.  I could dig it up eventually if we want to
revisit it, I suppose.

Thanks,
Karl

P.S. I won't be completely offline, but I expect to have only scant time
for anything computerish from now until Tuesday :(.