teTeX and TeX Live interoperability (was: Bug#100332: Bug#51869: New package splitting scheme for teTeX in Debian)

[Ralf Stubner <ralf.stubner@physik.uni-erlangen.de>]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2005 at 19:07 +0200, Norbert Preining wrote:
> Here we are at the core of the problem: The mixture of packages, and
> therefore there will be only *very* few packages which can be mixed
> between texlive and tetex.
> 
> The debian packages are coming direct from the collections of TeX live,
> these collections forming some "pool of interest" (special fonts,
> everything necessary for certain languages, etc).
> 
> But, as I said, this was our initial decision, taken here on the list.

Which was a very sensible decision IMO.

> THe machinery *IS* here to create for every tpm (which is more or less a
> CTAN package) a separate debian package. We decided against this, since
> this would create something like 1000 packages (and who wants to
> maintain all of them!?).
>
> But, in the long run we (does I hear in the back of my head something
> calling: "NO don't say anything, at the end you will have even more
> work" ;-) can separate out package by package (especially big ones) to
> be either taken over from soneone else, or automatically generated from
> the texlive `sources'.
> 
> Some of these packages have already been separated out:
> . cm-super (me)
> . texinfo (me)
> . lmodern (hmm, who?, I guess again I am a candidate, but for now: no)

In principle, I could imagine maintaining lmodern, but right now I have
to prepare my PhD examination ...

> So you see how it *could* work.

Yes, and there are other things that could be grouped in a better way.
For example, cmbright, hfbright and the cmbright part of cm-super could
be combined.
 
> But, for now, I see no possibility of *coexistance* of tetex and texlive
> on the same system (ie mixing of packages) due to the overlap of
> packages.

Another, rather radical, approach would be to use separate TEXMF trees,
ie, 

/usr/share/texmf-teTeX          for tetex-{base,extra}
/usr/share/texmf-TeXLive        for texlive-{...}
/usr/share/texmf                for *-bin packages (pool files) and
                                other packages 

That way, /usr/share/texmf would become something like the TEXMFSITE
mentioned in the policy. Of course, the *-bin packages would still have
to conflict with each other, and one probably has to be careful with
packags that provide new formats. One would have to decide on the search
order between texmf-teTeX and texmf-TeXLive. It might be good to have
that configurable in a simple way.

Of course, this would lead to some files being installed twice. I
personally could live with that ...

cheerio
ralf