[tex-live] Installing TeXLive2008 on Cygwin

[George N. White III]

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 9:25 AM, Angelo Graziosi
<angelo.graziosi at alice.it> wrote:

> Reinhard Kotucha ha scritto:
>>
>> [...]
>> If you are able (or anybody else) to compile TeX Live under Cygwin,
>> let us know.
>
> Using 20080816 source (tar.lzma) these are a few results.
>
> A) ./Build
> It fails in this way:
> [...]
> make[2]: *** [Font.lo] Error 1
> make[2]: Leaving directory
> `/work/texlive-20080816-source/Work/libs/graphite-engine/src'
> make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
> make[1]: Leaving directory
> `/work/texlive-20080816-source/Work/libs/graphite-engine'
> make: *** [all] Error 1
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> B) ./Build --without-graphite
> Still fails:
> [...]
> make[2]: *** [XeTeX_ext.o] Error 1
> make[2]: Leaving directory `/work/texlive-20080816-source/Work/texk/web2c'
> make[1]: *** [all] Error 1
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/work/texlive-20080816-source/Work/texk'
> make: *** [all] Error 1
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> C) ./Build --without-xetex
> Now it builds fine!
>
> $ ls -lrt inst/
> totale 1068
> drwxr-xr-x+  3 ...   0 Aug 25 13:08 bin
> [...]
> etc.. The bin dir has 290 binaries...

That is an encouraging number.

> How can I install the above ? Is there a way to modify the iso so that I can
> use the (linux-like) script install-tl?

Don't get ahead of yourself -- the first question is whether the binaries
actually work.

You should be able to use rsync to update the install you did with the
Win32 binaries, and you will need to create links as already
mentioned.  On linux I get an i686-pc-gnu-linux directory
in parallel with the i386-linux, etc. directories.   You can use the
new binaries for testing.  Once any problems are sorted out it should
not be a big issue to add cygwin binary packages for a future release.

> And, why in the build log I find 'with-old-mac-fonts'?
>
> For the sake of completeness, in Work/libs I find a lot of rebuild libs
> (ncurses, png, fretype,...) which Cygwin has as its own packages and which I
> installed...

If the Cygwin versions are current, try "--with-system..." options for
configure.
In the past, I have had cases where the system libraries included bug fixes
for a particular (obscure) platform, so "--with-system-..." may be needed to
get things working on Cygwin.

Xetex may be more difficult simply because it uses more 3rd party libraries
(fontconfig, etc.) that may not have suitable ports to Cygwin.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia