[ft-devel] Amalgamation details

[Vinnie]

> From: Alan Coopersmith <address@hidden>
> 
> A pretty convenient way to make your software full of security holes
> and other bugs if you don't spend the time to update it for every upstream
> patch, at which point you'll find that it's not all that convenient 
> compared to just using a shared library.

*sigh* people assume FreeType is only used for operating systems. How many 
times do I have to repeat the use-case for embedding both FreeType, and a font, 
within a desktop or smartphone application? For cases where the user cannot 
choose the font, there is no security hole.
>Amalgamation can be a way to make updating more convenient...Replacing
>old versions of freetype.c and freetype.h with newer versions of those same
>two files is far more convenient than replacing an old set of Freetype source
>files with a newer set, especially if files are renamed, removed, or added 
>between versions.

Right on! That's exactly what I'm talking about.


>My only concern about the amalgamated version of Freetype is that I don't know 
>if
>it will continue to be maintained. For that reason, we haven't yet switched 
>over to
>using the amalgamated version except experimentally.

It will be maintained, and I have plans for improving the amalgamated 
distribution further. I've already added a feature for reducing the size of the 
result, to shave about 570kb off the FreeType amalgamation. I would also like 
to implement a "config" header file that lets certain portions of FreeType get 
turned off and on easily with preprocessor directives. And there will be a 
COMMITLOG file that tracks exactly what's in the amalgamation by quoting the 
entire commit log from which it was generated, along with proper tags in the 
git repository to refer to specific releases of FreeType.

>Currently, if I'm not mistaken, the amalgamation tool itself is not 
>cross-platform. I
>haven't tried running it to produce the amalgamation myself. I've only tried 
>using
>versions of freetype.c and freetype.h that Vinnie has made available. I would 
>love
>to see the amalgamation tool become cross-platform and part of the Freetype 
>project itself.

Fully cross platform! The one thing that is not cross platform is the .bat file 
that drives it but that could be easily ported since its just a lot of command 
line switches.To get it into FreeType you would need the tool (which is itself 
just one source file, and one amalgamated multiplatform Juce module), the 
amalgamation templates, and a script to drive it. These are all open source.


Before jumping to include it in the official distribution, I suggest giving it 
a week or two until I've made all the improvements I can make.


Someone needed access to FT_Glyph which if I am not mistaken, is not available 
from a straight include of <freetype.h>. So I added the include to the 
amalgamated headers. If there are any other optional header files that I've 
forgotten let me know and I will add them. Also, if there is anything I can do 
to improve the amalgamated distribution I would be more than happy to do so.

Thanks