[tlbuild] dvisvgm

[Alan BRASLAU]

On Sun, 27 Apr 2014 09:34:03 -0400
Bob Tennent <rdt at cs.queensu.ca> wrote:

>  >|> So you're using a relatively recent gcc on a relatively ancient
>  >|> Centos-5 system. Can I ask why this combination is appropriate?
>  >|
>  >|Recent gcc is required because there is some code in TL that
>  >doesn't |compile with older compiler. Notable examples include
>  >LuaJIT and ICU, |but there might be other "black sheep". (I'm not
>  >sure what is the |minimum version of GCC this year, but last year
>  >Karl reported that at |least gcc 4.6 was needed.)
>  >|
>  >|Old linux is required because binaries compiled on the lastest
>  >linux |wouldn't work on an older one. (More specifically I think
>  >this has to |do with LIBC version rather than with linux version,
>  >but in principle |binaries from newer linuxes won't work on older
>  >ones.)
> 
> Thanks. So to provide a dvisvgm binary with-libgs for Linux users,
> it would be best to build on, say, Centos-5, using any gcc that
> succeeds. In fact, stock gcc-4.1.2 succeeds and the resulting binary
> works at least on Centos-5, Centos-6 and Fedora-20.
> 
> But here's what I find surprising: I can apparently build all of TL
> (all tests passed) with stock gcc-4.4.7 on Centos-6. Now of course
> most of those binaries don't work on, say, Centos-5 (though dvisvgm
> does), so perhaps gcc-4.8.2 is now overkill. 
> 
> Bob T.

I currently build the linux binaries for Mojca and the ConTeXt
standalone distribution (in parallel to TeXlive) using:
	64bit: CentOS 5.9 and its standard gcc 4.1.2
	32bit: Debian "stable" and its standard gcc 4.7.2
We only build luatex, luajitex, metapost and xetex
This seems to work for all the linux users downloading from the ConTeXt
garden.

We have found that building on "more recent" linux platforms indeed
causes problems for users of older (read stable) versions of linux due
to incompatible GLIBC versions.

The current TeXlive build succeeds on both of these systems ("./Build").
(but on the 64bit CentOS 5.9 system:
	lcdf-typetools
	FAIL: tests/tfm.test
)


Alan