[sword-devel] Dependency issues with ICU library versions on macOS

[Tobias Klein]

Dear all,

I just got feedback regarding ICU issues with Ezra Bible App on macOS.

It turned out that the specific version of the ICU library I had used to 
build Ezra on my Mac (69) was not available on the users's Mac, instead 
a newer version (71) was available.

This issue also occurs when using an older Debian package or rpm on a 
newer version of the respective distribution. The library versions are 
different.

Unfortunately I cannot even put this library version dependency into the 
DMG image of the app. It seems like DMG images do not support dependency 
resolution.

Solutions I could think of:

1) Link ICU statically (That's how I do it on Windows). I checked but 
could not find a way to handle this elegantly with pkg-config on macOS.
2) Add a functionality in Ezra Bible App that dynamically checks for the 
presence of the ICU library on startup and installs it if needed. (Ugly ...)
3) Build SWORD on macOS without ICU (that's how I do it on Android).

Any other hints anyone?

Best regards,
Tobias