Re: fmtutil and additional formats

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Hilmar Preusse <hille42@web.de> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> after the #338046 story seems to be over:
> I guess it is a good idea to mandate in the policy, that other
> maintainers have to use the fmtutil interface to generate additional
> formats. This is a mich more robust way and I don't know how many
> packages are still out there, which still use their own way to
> generate formats.

I agree, and propose the following text for the Section "4.3. Command
execution and format files".  Note that I changed "must" to "should" in
the first sentence because of the need to create formats during "work".
If anybody knows a better wording than "runtime programs", I'd be happy.

     If TeX formats need to be generated before execution, this should be
     done in the post-installation script.  Packages that depend on an
     executable can thus simply declare `Depends:' on the package providing
     the executable, and _only_ do that.  Any additional checks, e.g.  for
     the existence of format files, is unnecessary and harmful, causing
     internal changes (e.g.  of format file extensions) to break the
     depending package that does this check.  Maintainer scripts or
     programs in Debian packages should always use `fmtutil' or
     `fmtutil-sys' for format generation, and either add a `fmtutil.cnf'
     snippet in `/etc/texmf/fmt.d/' (with `fmtutil-sys', for site-wide
     formats), or use `fmtutil' with the `--cnffile' option and an
     appropriate local `fmtutil.cnf' (for runtime programs)

     Local administrators can override settings from `texmf.cnf' with
     environment variables; this has sometimes lead to errors in `postinst'
     scripts.  It is recommended that `postinst' scripts unset relevant
     variables before format creation or other problematic tasks.

Regards, Frank

-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer