is it possible to be pure go?

[Monirzadeh]

Hi
i plan to use this library in Shiori but using C block me to do that. (project will not build)
i am not familiar with writer library code base yet but is it possible to update to remove any C code and be a pure go library?

[haashemi]

Hi there.

As writer fully depends on harfbuzz (which is a C library), it wouldn't be that simple to do and would have its own drawbacks.

Possibility:

• Windows: We can use Harfbuzz's dll directly.
• Linux: There are some packages for this, but I've never used them.
• MacOS: I have zero experience with MacOS, sadly.

The problem:
You'd still have to have the harfbuzz library (.dll / .so) file in your PATH. But you can embed it in the binary if you use CGO If I'm not mistaken.
Also, there are pure Golang ports of Harfbuzz (like here), but I don't think it really matches with the goal of this package.

With that said, making it pure go is almost impossible, but I may add no-cgo options in the future to the upstream package (which is go-harfbuzz).

[haashemi]

I've opened the issue on the go-harfbuzz repo. I'll start working on it first, and then #3.

As I'm busy IRL (I'm a university student) right now, we can stale things for a short time, but I'll come back and work on them as soon as I can.