LaTeX/AMS-LaTeX Update Approach
I was wondering what approach, if any, that the Debian project is
taking to keep distributed versions of LaTeX and AMS-LaTeX
up-to-date. While the easiest solution is to depend on the
upstream teTeX maintainers to incorporate these updates into their
distribution and make frequent releases, that doesn't happen
(unless you count the prelease snapshots, and even there the LaTeX
and AMS-LaTeX code is infrequently updated). That leaves teTeX
users with a difficult decision to make: Stick with the older
LaTeX and AMS-LaTeX distributions for the sake of easy maintenance
or do a fairly significant amount of work to update those
distributions themselves.
Perhaps the most serious issue with updating-by-hand is deciding
where to put the updated files. If you place your new
LaTeX/AMS-LaTeX distribution in a system-local texmf tree
(/usr/local/lib/texmf, by default), those files will override the
files stored in the main texmf tree (/usr/share/texmf). While
teTeX is out of date, that would be desirable behavior, but once
the teTeX distribution is updated, you have to remember to remove
your local versions to take advantage of the newest release.
If, on the other hand, you overwrite the existing LaTeX and
AMS-LaTeX files in the main texmf tree, you will almost certainly
overwrite your updates if you upgrade your teTeX install before
teTeX incorporates the newer files.
The second problem is the amount of work necessary to get LaTeX
installed and working from source. Once you've downloaded the
necessary files, you have to unpack the .dtx files, rebuild the
format files, and then move the important files (which are mixed
in with the installation files) to appropriate places in a TeX
inputs tree. It's not that bad, but it's not something that users
are likely to be happy about, and it's certainly not as trivial as
typing 'apt-get install latex-19991201'.
I think that both the problems I've described could be solved by
creating new Debian packages for LaTeX and AMS-LaTeX updates.
When a new LaTeX becomes available, a deb would be created
containing all the necessary files, with documentation TeXed and
installed in appropriate locations, and scripts to rebuild the
format files during the installation process. I suggest that
these updates be installed in a third texmf tree (perhaps
something like /usr/share/texmf-debian), and that the installation
process would update the teTeX configuration files to add that
tree to the search paths, presumably between /usr/local/lib/texmf
and /usr/share/texmf (so that local files would still override the
official system files). Dependencies could be set up so that
these packages would conflict with older installations of the same
material (i.e., if LaTeX is updated twice before a new release of
teTeX is made, there might be two LaTeX debs, with the newer one
obsoleting the older one), and so that when teTeX updates its
LaTeX/AMS-TeX files, the redundant LaTeX/AMS-LaTeX Debian packages
would be obsoleted and removed.
As a possible added benefit, /usr/share/texmf-debian would be a
good place to store any Debian-specific files related to TeX or
LaTeX.
I would appreciate any opinions on this idea (including pointers
to existing solutions!). From what I can tell, this list seems to
be the most appropriate place to discuss such issues.
Thanks for your attention.
C.
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Behind the counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly into space,
a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the socket behind his ear.
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C.M. Connelly c@eskimo.com SHC, DS
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