dh_installtex just for calling mktexlsr? (was: Bug#358695: ITP: latex-utils -- utilities for LaTeX/xfig)

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Hi, 

masters of dh_installtex,

Vincent Danjean <Vincent.Danjean@ens-lyon.org> wrote:

> Frank Küster wrote:
>> Vincent Danjean <Vincent.Danjean@ens-lyon.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> I only have a few .sty that I cuurently install in
>>> /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/latex-utils/ (will be latex-compile/)
>>> And in my postinst, I use dh_installtex
>> 
>> Do you need to register "map files, new formats, and new languages
>> with TeX"?  That's the purpose of dh_installtex.  Otherwise just call
>> mktexlsr (or "mktexlsr /usr/share/texmf/" if you install only there).
>
> I just need to call mktexlsr. Previously (the package exists for a long
> time even if it was not in Debian), I called manually mktexlsr.
> Then, I switched to dh_installtex that installs several sanity checks
> (is libkpathsea configured ?, ...)
> The drawback is that update-updmap, update-language and update-fmtutil
> are called whereas my package does not need them (and that mktexlsr is
> called without any argument, so all dirs are checked).
>
> I would prefer to stick with dh_installtex (so that improvment in this
> script will automatically benefit to my package). But if you think it is
> not a good think, I will go back with manual invocation of
> dh_installtex.

Hm, I think that it's good to have those checks, but only if they are
needed.  They are not needed if you depend on "tetex-bin |
texlive-base-bin", since in this case it's guaranteed that mktexlsr
actually works (libkpathsea is configured etc.).  But there may be
packages which install TeX input files, but do not depend on a TeX
system (instead only Recommend or Suggest).

> Another possibility would be to improve dh_installtex, so that it better
> manages simple latex package. Perhaps new options to remove
> update-updmap, update-language and/or update-fmtutil calls. And a scan
> of the package to call mktexlsr only on directories present in the
> package. Would you be interested by this kind of developments ?

I'm not familiar with dh_installtex code - would it be easy to add an
option, so that only the mktexlsr call is introduced into maintainer
scripts?  Should we provide an option to add directories to the mktexlsr
call, so that only the directories where files have been installed are
updated?  This could speed up things considerably, and there's no need
to update the font cache or TEXMFSITE, or a possibly large TEXMFLOCAL
when installing a couple of files in TEXMFMAIN.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)