[Texmacs-dev] Static builds of Qt-TeXmacs

[Joris van der Hoeven]

Hi all,

In order to completely switch to the Qt version, it would be nice to
distribute GNU/Linux versions of TeXmacs on our website which work on
most GNU/Linux distributions.  In the past, I managed to build such
a static binary distribution for the X11 version (using 'make STATIC_TEXMACS'),
on an old computer with RedHat.  However, we have been unsuccessful so far
to build a similar static binary distribution for the new Qt version.

It would be extremely helpful if someone on this list managed to
build such a static binary and give us the recipe; it seems that
one should carefully pick a reference GNU/Linux distribution,
as well as the versions of gcc, Qt and all other required
dependencies (Guile, Freetype, etc.).  I almost got everything
to work under Redhat 9, with gcc 4.3.7 and Qt 4.7,
but some problems remained.

You may wonder why to do this and not rely on packagers of major distributions.
Unfortunately, we cannot really rely on this.  Some people still run older
versions of an OS, for which support has been disrupted.  Some packagers
don't do their job as well as we might wish.  Some people may want
to have the latest version as soon as it becomes available.
Still others may not have the required rights for installing
packages provided by the OS.  Etc., etc.

Best wishes, --Joris