Bug#246818: Bug#213310: omega.map, all map files, and generated map files

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> wrote:

I forgot to mention some Pro's and Con's that I see with this
approach. The obvious Pros, of course, are that it fixes both bugs.

> This is what I do:
>
> - tetex-bin sets now VARTEXMF in 05TeXMF.cnf and puts it in MAINTEXMF
>   (and depends on the proper version of tetex-base)

This may have side effects. I have grepped through the files in
tetex-bin's texk directory, looking for "VARTEXMF". Besides
documentation and the contrib directory (not installed on UNIX), it is
used 

- in many files in texk/kpathsea (creation of texmf.cnf)

- tetex/updmap{,.man} (that's what we intend)

- tetex/fmtutil: Will put the format files into $VARTEXMF/web2c - but
  that is exactly where they are now

- tetex/texconfig: Will put its output files there. I don't know which
  they are. But if they are in /etc/texmf now, the old ones will loose
  their effect. This in fact will cause us problems.

  Possible solutions could be

  - a new symlink farm, now from files in VARTEXMF to /etc/texmf: I
    dislike this. Files will be added, moved, removed...

  - patching texconfig to put its files in /etc. This should be easy,
    since it is set in exactly two lines:

# The texmf tree where we put generated files into. Defaults to system tree:
: ${TC_VARTEXMF=`kpsewhich -expand-var='$VARTEXMF'`}
test -z "$TC_VARTEXMF" && TC_VARTEXMF=$TC_TEXMFMAIN

We could just replace both lines with 

TC_VARTEXMF=$TC_TEXMFMAIN

And every file will be put where it is found, and into /etc/texmf if we
have correct links. 

> - tetex-base does no longer move any of the static map files to /etc/,
>   but treats them as ordinary files in TEXMFMAIN

I think those files aren't really configuration files. While there may
be bugs in them, nobody edits them to customize a local system - rather,
a new map file is added, or the configuration files in
/etc/texmf/updmap.d/ are altered.

Pros:

- This makes our package creation process much simpler and less
  error-prone. It was a big amount of work to get all this symlinking
  stuff going for the update to tetex-3.0-beta, and there still might be
  some mistakes in it.

- /etc is less cluttered, and users can concentrate on real
  configuration files

Cons:

- On updated machines, these files will still lie around in
  /etc/texmf/dvips. I have created the remove-oldmaps example script
  (but we should additionally add maps that only existed in 1.x)

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie