Re: GTK+ 3.8.0 released

[Edscott Wilson <edscott wilson garcia gmail com>]

2013/3/26 Allin Cottrell <cottrell wfu edu>

> On Tue, 26 Mar 2013, Edscott Wilson wrote:
>
>  It would be nice know that >=pango1.32.4 means that systems with
> > fontconfig, freetype and xft if and only if harfbuzz >= 0.9.9.
> >
> > Seems like the pango 1.32.4 configure.ac tests in things in the wrong
> > order.
>
> Not sure about that, but the thing that bothers me is that the shiny new
> pango 1.34.0 ("latest stable", one might suppose) depends on a
> release-candidate version of fontconfig (2.10.91).

> From the configure script of 1.32.4, the test for fontconfig>=2.5.0 will
only take place if the condition  harfbuzz>=0.9.9 is met. If the fontconfig
test does not take place this will avoid the tests for freetype>=2.1.5 and
xft>=2.0.0 and cairo-ft>=1.7.6. The consequence is that if your system has
the correct fontconfig, freetype, xft and cairo-ft, but no harfbuzz,
configure will fail with a

configure: error: *** Could not enable any backends.
*** Must have at least one backend to build Pango.

Instead of a nicer: "harfbuzz>=0.9.9 requirement not met" (after verifying
that correct freetype, xft, cairo-ft and fontconfig are installed).

With regard to pango-1.34.0, I suppose the message intended (with the
dependence on a release candidate fontconfig) is that this pango version
should be avoided like the plague unless there is some specific new feature
or bug fix which you require to test.