Bug#223728: tetex-bin needn't depend on xlibs
Hilmar Preusse <hille42@web.de> schrieb:
> On 12.12.03 Frank Küster (frank@kuesterei.ch) wrote:
>
>> Yes, it has. The answer was "not for woody", but unfortunately
>> since then nobody worked on it. I cannot judge whether we are again
>> too near to a freeze. But at least we have a working patch now.
>>
> IMHO we should start working on this ASAP. If it won't go into
> testing until freeze due to RC-bugs we're out of luck but at least
> we've closed that stuff in unstable.
> As far as I understood the last messages from the d-i team we have
> still a few weeks and the RC-bug count didn't drop that rapidly
> either.
O.K. Let's go. What do the others think?
>> And there are even some problems with splitting off tetex-doc and
>> tetex-src (no bug reports so far).
>>
> -v please
Some packages, e.g. KOMA-Script, require that any distribution be
complete. While it may be argued that we fulfill this requirement by
Recommends: tetex-doc (but also that we don't), indeed this causes
problems. It's of course one good point to have the option of installing
only the really necessary stuff (e.g. on servers that need TeX to
compile documents written elsewhere), but on the other hand most users
of our packages will produce documents and thus need the documentation.
The problem is that if they don't find it on their harddisk, many people
tend to type the name into google and download whatever they find. This
is not my invention, but the bad experience of the regulars of the
de.comp.text.tex newsgroup. Often this documentation refers to older or
newer versions than they use, with the obvious consequences.
One very special thing is that for the KOMA-Script bundle there exists a
special bug report form that interactively asks the user which part of
the bundle causes problems and then tries to figure out exactly what
version is that part etc., and generate a bug report that contains all
the information needed. This mechanism relies on the literal
fullfillment of the "only complete distribution" requirement: It looks
into the source files of the documentation. It doesn't work without
tetex-src installed. On the other hand, this one is a rather special
problem and could probably be solved by a debian-specific patch that
would ask the user to install tetex-src.
Bye, Frank
--
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie
Reply to: