Re: Questions about MiKTeX package manager for Debian
Hi Paul,
quick reply, I am half a day off the mountains,
On Di, 15 Jul 2008, Paul Gevers wrote:
> I am currently working on packaging the MiKTeX-tools for Debian, which
> consists mainly of a LaTeX package manager. (I hope you know the tools.)
No idea what these tools are. MikTeX is Windows specific AFAIR, and I
have no idea what they are doing.
> tell me how TeXlive (which if I am correct also works from the CTAN),
> works with licensing/copyrights, because this is a large issue with
> Debian. Someone [1] suggested to ask here.
Hand checking, done on upstream TeX Live and in Debian.
> By the way, how do you feel about such a LaTeX package manager for
> Debian? Do you think it might be useful? Or does TeXlive include a
I would say that it is *MAYBE* a good idea, but I guess the problem is
that
- where to put the updated packages?
you don't want to overwrite files installed by the dpkg package
manager that way, or your system will be messed yompletely.
And we will NOT accept *any* bug reports anymore since we cannot
guarantee that we can reproduce that ;-)
- where to put new packages
- how to work across updates of TeX Live, where suddenly files in
TEXMFLOCAL are older than the ones in TEXMFMAIN/texmf-texlive?
Honestly, I don't see a big advantage, since the package manager just
circumvents the Debian packaging structure, which is *bad* by
definition.
> manager which does the same thing? I read somewhere that TeXlive is also
> (partly) based on MiKTeX.
No, definitely not. We use scripts developed by TE for teTeX, and Miktex
maybe also uses these scripts, other than that there is no interaction.
Pity for that, but it is not on our (upstream TeX Live) side, since we
proposed to have a common packaging structure. But the developer of
MikTeX is not interested in cooperating with TeX Live.
So please first explain what these magic tools should do?
BTW; TL 2008 will have the TeX Live Manager (tlmgr), inlcuding a Perl/Tk
interface, for managing, updaing etc. No idea how I will integrate that
one with Debian, enough to do to program itself (what is also my job).
Best wishes
Norbert
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Dr. Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> Vienna University of Technology
Debian Developer <preining@debian.org> Debian TeX Group
gpg DSA: 0x09C5B094 fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76 A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
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