Since 2019 there is a new patch for SDL_ttf which has already landed in master. This patch has added optional HarfBuzz dependency to SDL_ttf. It is behind a compile flag though ./configure CPPFLAGS=-DTTF_USE_HARFBUZZ=1.
I wonder whether it is possible to release at least a beta version with these changes? The last release is 2.0.15 from 2019.
The patch is perfectly fine and I am using it as you suggested. However, integrating it to other pipeline such as Arch repositories and similar often need having a release version number. That’s why I asked for a release, perhaps as a tar.gz or .zip file.