Re: Request for an "etch-ignore carte blanche" for alternative texlive dependencies
On Thursday 14 December 2006 22:18, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 12, 2006 at 08:38:42AM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
> > Would it be possible to get a "carte blanche" for an etch-ignore tag for
> > any RC bug that
> >
> > - has been introduced by adding alternative dependencies on texlive
> >
> > - on a package that had correct dependencies before that
> >
> > - if the texlive alternatives are listed second, so that the working
> > combination will be installed if no TeX system was installed before
>
> No, I certainly don't think such bugs would warrant an etch-ignore tag,
> especially seeing how they would be new bugs *introduced* after the start
> of the freeze.
Steve,
Tetex upstream terminated[0] May 2006 with the suggestion that people
switch to Texlive. Tetex is going gently into that good night. Before
Lenny rides to Etch's rescue, Tetex will be well bit-rotted.
$ apt-cache rdepends tetex-base | wc -l
80
$ apt-cache rdepends tetex-bin | wc -l
202
...
A lot of packages need a working Tetex/Texlive. If I decide to use
such a package a year from now, I'd rather have the possibility of using
Texlive and the hope that most of the dependencies are correct rather
than being forced to use an unsupported and unsupportable Tetex.
FWIW, dependencies are a little different in the Tex world than in
most of Debian. Because the need for macros, fonts, templates etc
are driven by the user documents rather than the software, Debian
Tex users are accustomed to having to find and install extra files
or packages to make their docs build.
There are no good solutions here but a best effort to accomodate
Texlive is better than none. Frank's plan has the additional virtue
that Tetex remains the default and Tetex dependencies are unaffected.
Frank's plan provides a good starting point when that time comes for
each Tetex user when the switch to Texlive becomes inescapable.
Please reconsider,
--Mike Bird
[0] http://www.tug.org/tetex/
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