So I know there are a lot of software guys and LaTeX users on this forum, so I wonder if anyone has ever tried to do something like the following.
We have a software project that does a bunch of things, and one of the functions is to do report generation based on some dynamic results. I've worked out the logic of how to write a LaTeX file in the right way based on the outcomes of other stuff the program does. Then it can be generated into a PDF using the LaTeX engines. It's neat, but it requires a LaTeX installation on the machine running the application in order to make the PDF. This is not a complete show-stopper, but it makes the whole thing a lot heavier. (Installing the standard Windows MiKTeX with the required packages makes the whole thing much bulkier.)
So basically, we want to package up the LaTeX engine (specifically, xelatex) into the installer or as some small program that can be called without a full-on installation. I think at a minimum it needs the base packages and the other packages the document requires, and I'm not sure there's a way around including all those files in the installation. So anyway, my question is: does anyone have any experience trying to bundle up some kind of minimalistic LaTeX functionality in some other software? I haven't thoroughly checked out stack exchange or other forums yet; I just thought I'd see here since I know we have a lot of programmers.