Re: Questions about packaging LaTeX macros
I'm not completely familiar with the Debian packaging standards for TeX
macros, but I'm very familiar with TeX in general, so I'll try to answer
the questions that are general and leave the Debian-specific questions for
others.
Kevin B McCarty <kmccarty@Princeton.EDU> writes:
> 1) Some .sty files are in a subdirectory - that is, most get installed
> to /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/xymtex/ but a few go into
> .../xymtex/xymtxps/ - will mktexlsr still find them there?
Yes. /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf has:
TEXINPUTS.latex = .;$TEXMF/tex/{latex,generic,}//
and similarly for all of the other drivers. The trailing slash means a
fully recursive search of the directories under that point.
> 2) Upstream source includes a bunch of .dtx and .ins files as well as
> .sty files. It appears that the .sty and .ins files are both
> autogenerated from .dtx files (in some way involving "docstrip" which I
> don't yet know). Should they all be installed into the xymtex binary
> package, or only the .sty's?
No, only the .sty files, unless the Debian packaging is somehow unusual.
Think of the .ins file as the Makefile and the .dtx file as the package
source. .dtx is a combination of the package .sty files and the
documentation for it, and docstrip extracts the .sty files, leaving behind
the documentation. To get the documentation, you just run latex directly
on the .dtx file.
> 3) Since the .sty files are autogenerated, should I be trying to
> re-generate them before installing them? Upstream source doesn't have a
> Makefile or anything, so it isn't immediately obvious to me how to do
> so.
latex *.ins will regenerate the files. I don't suppose it would hurt, but
the individual .sty files are also usable source, so the same sort of
verification that the package can "compile" isn't as meaningful for LaTeX
packages. But it may be worthwhile to make sure that the .sty files can
be regenerated from .dtx in case anyone wants to make changes to the .dtx
file.
I don't know if Debian has any specific packaging rules about this for
LaTeX macros.
> 4) On a similar note, upstream includes .tex, .dvi, and .pdf files of
> XyMTeX documentation. Should I be re-generating the DVIs and PDFs? (I
> could have sworn there was a recent thread about this very subject on
> debian-mentors, but I can't find it, nor remember the conclusion.)
I would, yes, just to make sure that the files you distribute can be
regenerated from the package. You should be able to do this by running
latex and pdflatex on the .dtx file.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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