[tex-live] my experience of building TeX Live with Windows gcc 64 bits

[Philip Taylor]

Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
> do you *want* to compile the binaries yourself?  An alternative is to
> steal them from Akira's W32TeX.  The file
>
>   http://ctan.ijs.si/mirror/w32tex/current/win64/xetex-w64.tar.xz
>
> is just two days old and very likely contains the latest fix.
>
> As far as your question is concerned, my experience is that it is
> *much* easier to compile programs on Linux and Cygwin rather than with
> MinGW. Thus I suppose that Akira's binaries are a very good
> alternative, at least
I really would like to be able to compile at least XeTeX, Reinhard -- then I can experiment with features that I think useful but which are not of interest to others.  The 64-bit version is optional, but as I have a 64-bit processor and a 64-bit operating system, a 64-bit XeTeX binary would seem to make sense to me ...

And I also think that the TeX community as a whole would benefit if expertise in compiling TeX Live for Windows were more widely distributed than at present -- the entire TeX world is surely grateful to Akira for his incredibly useful work, but if he were suddenly to find himself in a position where he could no longer offer this service, then it would seem to me to be important that a few others should be able to slowly try to take over what he has been doing single-handedly until now ...

The real problem, as I now understand rather better than I did 24 hours ago (i.e., pre-MinGW) is that one does not simply "compile XeTeX".  The whole thing is wrapped in a whole sequence of wrappers (build, configure, make, ...), none of which do I understand in the slightest. 

Anyhow, my attempt failed.  I tried the following :
> # Create build directory:
> mkdir Work
> cd Work
> # Do the configure:
> ../configure --disable-all-pkgs --enable-xetex -C CFLAGS=-g CXXFLAGS=-g
>
> # Do the make:
> make
no error was reported at the final exit of "make", but no XeTeX binary was created and instead I ended up with dozens of new, partially populated directories in "Work/texk"that appear to have nothing whatsoever to do with XeTeX, and a rather smaller number under "Work/utils" and elsewhere.   How do I even start to try to identify why things failed, and why do I now have all these new, seemingly unwanted, directories ?

As an aside, "configure" is extraordinarily verbose :  can I not send the 99.9% of "OK" or "GOOD" messages elsewhere and see only "FAILED" messages on my screen ?

Sub-directory listing of "Work/texk" :
>
>   * afm2pl
>   * bibtex-x
>   * chktex
>   * cjkutils
>   * detex
>   * dtl
>   * dvi2tty
>   * dvidvi
>   * dviljk
>   * dvipdfm-x
>   * dvipng
>   * dvipos
>   * dvipsk
>   * dvisvgm
>   * gregorio
>   * gsftopk
>   * kpathsea
>   * lcdf-typetools
>   * makeindexk
>   * makejvf
>   * mendexk
>   * musixtnt
>   * ps2pk
>   * psutils
>   * ptexenc
>   * seetexk
>   * tex4htk
>   * texlive
>   * ttf2pk2
>   * ttfdump
>   * upmendex
>   * web2c
>   * xdvik
>
Sub-directory listing of "Work/utils" :

  * autosp
  * devnag
  * lacheck
  * m-tx
  * pmx
  * ps2eps
  * t1utils
  * texdoctk
  * tpic2pdftex
  * vlna
  * xindy
  * xpdfopen


** Phil.
-- 

Philip Taylor

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/attachments/20160702/17bc98d8/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 12104 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/attachments/20160702/17bc98d8/attachment-0001.jpe>