Re: Release Goal Proposal: texlive-transition
Hi,
back from vacation, I'm working on my mail backlog.
I've been told that -release is not a discussion list. What would be a
more appropriate list for discussing release goals and release
strategies?
Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 09:02:47AM -0700, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
>> On Wed, 2007-07-04 at 13:30 +0200, Florent Rougon wrote:
>> > [Trying to reply for Frank, since he's on vacation...]
>
>> > Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:
>
>> > > This particular problem only exists because you're providing tetex-bin and
>> > > tetex-extra packages that don't have the same semantics as previous
>> > > versions.
>
>> > As Frank explained, it is impossible to provide "packages that don't have
>> > the same semantics as previous versions". The only possible thing, since
>> > teTeX is removed, is to provide "packages that provide a superset of the
>> > functionality provided by tetex-* packages when teTeX was still in the
>> > archive."
>
>> I think the problem is that the new packages aren't a superset; you
>> can't reliably put in the new package and expect all the previously
>> working bits to still keep working.
>
> Rather, the problem is that Frank's comments implied this was *not* a goal
> of the TeX team.
It was one goal, but there were others. These include to no longer
force the installation of large, often unmaintained parts of tetex
which have only a small user base.
In an older mail:
,----
| Florent wrote:
|
| > Steve wrote
| >
| > > And frankly, the claim that tetex-bin and tetex-extra packages which
| > > arbitrarily change which functionality they provide gives users "a smooth
| > > upgrade experience" looks like total nonsense to me.
| >
| > Frankly, I don't think Frank wants to "arbitrarily change" the
| > functionality provided by the tetex-* metapackages. If he changes this
| > functionality, it is probably because he discovered a feature of the
| > (old) real tetex packages that is not yet provided by the Depends of the
| > metapackages, and he wants to fix this bug.
`----
This, and of course the possibility to remove parts which slipped into
the tetex-bin (and -extra) meta packages and either weren't in tetex, or
were an unnecessary annoyance for tetex users already.
I know that users find upgrades "unsmooth" when the package size
increases a lot, or unnecessary things are done (see the numerous
reports about running mktexlsr and updmap multiple times), so being
small and fast is part of a smooth upgrade, too. And since texlive is
going to be bigger than teTeX, anyway, we'd rather be as small as
possible.
> If it is, then the concerns about the user experience go away... as does any
> urgency of trying to eliminate the references to these packages in the rest
> of the archive, since the dependencies will be correctly satisfiable through
> lenny and will not significantly interfere with the upgrade path post-lenny.
It is not (because of the "remove" bit) - but still, what do you
suggest?
Note that the problem is not only with tetex-bin and tetex-extra, but
also with the "texlive" metapackage. It was specifically designed to be
the package which a standard LaTeX or ConTeXt user, or a beginner,
should install to be able to work decently. This includes the
possibility to remove obsolete stuff earlier than it is removed from the
complete TeXLive distribution. For example, it might be that in TeXLive
2009 (probably not 2008), the pdfTeX binary will still be present, but
no longer used by default (XeTeX and luaTeX instead). I'd rather remove
it from what's pulled in by "texlive" by then. Other examples might be
the removal from the default install of our copy of the PS base fonts
once the TeX Gyre fonts, their improved successors, are available in
Debian.
Do you generally oppose such ideas? If not, which approach would you
suggest?
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
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