Bug#390129: tetex-base: Does not properly call update-* scripts

[Frank Küster <frank@kuesterei.ch>]

Ralf Stubner <ralf.stubner@physik.uni-erlangen.de> wrote:

> Agreed in principle (see below). However, I think it is also important
> that every package that calls fmtutil/updmap/... has to call the
> apropriate update-* scripts before, which tetex-bin does not at the moment.
>
> Just imagine that instead of tetex-base it would have been tetex-bin
> that got updated together with jadetex recently: tetex-bin's postinst
> regenerates formats, but the present fmtutil.cnf still represents the
> state valid before the changes to jadtex.ini. The same failure as with
> tetex-base would occur. If tetex-bin's postinst would call
> update-format, the problematic lines would not be present in fmtutil.cnf
> due to the present .dpkg-new file.

I agree, we should get a tetex-bin that does this into etch, and check
texlive-*bin*. 

> A general point: Recently I was thinking whether it would make sense to
> change the behaviour of 'format providing packages' such as tetex-base
> or jadetex: Right now they regerenate all formats, even though this is
> not necessary. Why not have them regenerate only those formats they
> actually provide? A simple way to achieve this would be to call
>
> fmtutil-sys --all --cnffile /etc/texmf/fmt.d/foo.cnf
>
> That way these packages would be more self contained and could not get
> as easily broken by other packages. Of course, the 'binary providing
> packages' such as tetex-bin would still have to regenerate all formats.

I think that's a very good idea.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)