Re: Debian packages for TeXlive?
On Mon, Nov 26, 2001 at 05:01:13PM +0000, Marco Kuhlmann wrote:
> Hi ya.
>
> Sebastian Rahtz some time ago proposed to manage the 50+
> collections of the TeXlive distribution as Debian packages. He
> did some pre-testing with a script that from the XML file
> describing a collection would build a deb.
>
> As I am quite interested in getting TeXlive integrated into
> Debian in a cleaner way than is possible today, I wonder about
> whether or not packaging TeXlive would be a Good Thing (tm) and
> about the main problems that such a project would involve.
I think it is a wonderful idea, and the simplest way we are likely to
be able to split up the TeX distribution we have. teTeX and TeXlive 6
are, I believe, intended to be in sync and to then essentially stay
that way.
> Sebastian to me mentioned three major problems:
>
> - conflicts with tetex, and packages that depend on it,
Others have responded to this.
> - packaging of binaries,
Shouldn't be a problem, as long as source is available (and I believe
it is).
> - not enough dependency information.
This is an issue, but not just a Debian one: it faces anyone using
TeXlive. We could do a real service to the community by working out
the dependencies, or at least some of them. Mostly it shouldn't be
too hard to do: I for one will get a TeXLive CD (or two or three) and
would be willing to work out the inter-package non-library
dependencies for a couple of dozen packages (or more, depending on how
complex it turns out to be).
> Any comments on this would be appreciated. I saw a request
> regarding this issue in October, but not much response on that.
I would recommend calling the packages either tex-* or better
texmf-*. Calling it texlive-* connects it too much to an individual
collection, and makes extending the name to packages not on TeXlive a
bit awkward. I doubt we'd be using the TeXlive installer script,
unless it's modified and repackaged in a Debian-specific way.
Sounds a cool idea!
Julian
--
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Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, Debian GNU/Linux Developer
Queen Mary, Univ. of London see http://people.debian.org/~jdg/
http://www.maths.qmul.ac.uk/~jdg/ or http://www.debian.org/
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