[tex-live] HarfBuzz plans to go C++11

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Mon Dec 24 00:22:58 CET 2018


    wl> Behdad plans to move HarfBuzz to C++11.

Thanks for the warning.

    mm> TeX Live now depends on other libraries (poppler, ICU, ...) and
    uses binaries (dvisvgm, partially asymptote, ...) which need C++11,

Yes, we were forced into C++11 last year by ICU. What this means is that
any harfbuzz-using program will not be compilable on CentOS 6 or other
glibc 2.12 systems, as discussed here, among other places:
  https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/443489
I don't know off the top of my head if there are any programs in TL that
use harfbuzz and not poppler.

Poppler has since moved to C++14 which is a killer, so I hope that
doesn't happen with harfbuzz any time soon. (Our only short-term
solution is not to update Poppler. I think we can get away with this
because we use only small pieces of it. The most likely long-term
solution is to switch to the "(lua)pplib" Luigi has developed, so we
won't depend on poppler at all any more.) --best, karl.


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