Missing .la files

[Ken Brown]

On 2/17/2014 8:55 PM, Yaakov (Cygwin/X) wrote:
> 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".

Thanks for your help, Yaakov.  I understand the problem now (and 
specifically the reason for the -static flag, which is used on Cygwin 
only).  I'm following up upstream:

   http://tug.org/pipermail/tlbuild/2014q1/002750.html

Ken