Missing .la files

[Yaakov (Cygwin/X)]

On 2014-02-17 16:44, Ken Brown wrote:
> On 2/17/2014 3:25 PM, Yaakov (Cygwin/X) wrote:
>> On 2014-02-17 13:28, Ken Brown wrote:
>>>   If not, can the .la files for those three libraries be added to the
>>> x86_64 distro?
>>
>> That's clearly not necessary.  The real question is if we should be
>> providing static libraries.  Fedora has moved away from them for the
>> most part (and they also remove .la files), and we have been doing the
>> same for a while.  Keeping in mind that there is no completely static
>> linkage on Cygwin, and we already have a dynamically linked texlive in
>> the distro, I'm not convinced that there is a real need to provide
>> static libraries for all of its many dependencies.
>>
>> But as I wrote that, it occurred to me that IIRC texlive can be built
>> with either system or bundled dependencies.  Wouldn't their distribution
>> be built with --without-system-*?
>
> Yes, for all the libraries that they bundle.  But they don't bundle the
> three libraries I mentioned.  So my revised request is that Cygwin
> provide static libraries for fontconfig, expat, and freetype.  If you
> think this is inappropriate, can you suggest another way for me to deal
> with the problem?  I could of course build the static libraries myself,
> but then it becomes difficult for others to replicate the build.

Fontconfig is the main culprit here (the others are its own deps), but 
AFAICS these are not bundled on purpose, and should indeed be linked 
dynamically:

https://www.tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2006-October/011366.html

The reasoning there is sound IMO.  Furthermore, the TeX Live guide 
implies a runtime dependency on fontconfig for all *NIX systems (see 
sections 3.1.1, 3.1.4, and 3.4.4):

https://www.tug.org/texlive/doc/texlive-en/texlive-en.html

Therefore, I believe the correct course of action here is to fix the 
texlive build system to not insist on static fontconfig and deps. 
Wherever it is in the xetex build, change those flags to "-Wl,-Bdynamic 
-lfontconfig -lexpat -lfreetype -Wl,-Bstatic".


Yaakov