Missing font slows down build and causes non-zero status code
The \tryfont
macro considerably increases build time by repeatably searching for the (missing) Calibri font. It also causes xelatex to exit with a non-zero status code since the missing font counts as an error; on older latexmk, such as the version on IDA's systems, the build continues anyway, which is probably a bug; on newer latexmk the build stops after the first pass.
With \tryfont:
$ time make all
...
...
Latexmk: Errors, so I did not complete making targets
Collected error summary (may duplicate other messages):
pdflatex: Command for 'pdflatex' gave return code 256
Latexmk: Use the -f option to force complete processing,
unless error was exceeding maximum runs of latex/pdflatex.
make: *** [demo_student_thesis.pdf] Error 12
real 0m51.090s
user 0m46.436s
sys 0m2.788s
Without \tryfont: (body commented out)
$ time make all
...
...
Latexmk: All targets (demo_student_thesis.pdf) are up-to-date
real 0m9.563s
user 0m8.964s
sys 0m0.692s
Tested on IDA's system (parlomba3).
Whether or not one considers this a bug I guess comes down to wheater or not one considers Linux/Mac supported platforms (since it's caused by Calibri, which is Windows-only, not being available).