Bug#353474: tetex-bin: Fails to install
The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to gmane.linux.debian.devel.tetex as well.
John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
> But I had rejected the updates to the conffiles because I had some
> custom things in there to increase memory limits for various items.
> I wonder if it would be possible to make the upgrade work even if
> existing conffiles are kept?
Instead of editing the existing file, create a new file (which sorts
before the existing file, 04memory.cnf or somesuch) and just set your
larger memory in there. This will override the settings in later
files without causing conflicts on upgrades.
The same applies to people wanting to set HOMETEXMF to ~/.texmf (or
disable it) instead of ~/texmf---this kind of thing comes up quite
often: I think almost all the "fails to install" could have been
avoided if we encourage users to add new files to texmf.d rather than
editing existing ones, so maybe we need to document it more
thoroughly somewhere (it is mentioned at the top of texmf.cnf but if
you only look at a later file it is possible to miss it. (and also if
you are porting some patch from a non-debian tetex withough the
texmf.d/ enhancement))
More generally it would be useful to have a README.Debian-config file
(but with a sensible name) that could document how one customises TeX
under Debian, it could also mention
*enabling/disabling map files
*installing new packages
*changing language.dat (adding new patterns or disabling some)
*fmtutil versus fmtutil-sys (or maybe a user will never need this)
*installing new fonts (this is possibly too ambitious)
*etc
ie the stuff where Debian has diverged slightly from upstream. Some
of this is explained well in the policy draft (i think), but users
wont find it there.
(sorry this message is a bit too long, but i dont have time to make it
shorter)
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