[tlbuild] Building TL2012 on Cygwin: biber

[Nikola Lečić]

On Fri, 4 May 2012 22:19:06 +0000, Karl Berry wrote:
> From the build log of TL2012 on Cygwin seems that Biber isn't really 
>     built 
> 
> This is the case on all platforms.  
> 
>     I would ask if there is an optio for Build to "force" the build.
> 
> No.  Actually building the biber binaries is a completely different task
> from anything else that is done in the TL build with zillions of
> prerequisites, last I knew.  Thus it would be nonsensical to try to make
> it part of the TL build under any circumstances.  (If anyone wants to do
> that, use --disable-biber with TL, then download the original biber
> sources and have fun.  I know some of the TL builders are the ones
> going through the process and building the binaries that end up on CTAN.)

Indeed, building biber is very difficult task. Biber often relies on
brand new releases of perl modules. Therefore you can't rely on your
distribution, because it normally offers older-than-needed modules.

Besides, in the case of FreeBSD, I even use a customised version of
perl binary in order to build *portable* biber. Moreover, the pp
packager (PAR::Packer module) is non-predictable and can change its
behaviour from release to release, so usually a lot of thorough testing
is needed to ensure that new binary behaves the same way the old ones
used to.

-- 
Nikola Lečić = Никола Лечић
fingerprint : FEF3 66AF C90E EDC3 D878  7CDC 956D F4AB A377 1C9B
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~