RFC: re-organizing the layout of texlive, help with perl

[Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>]

HI all!

Since it seems to be quite hard to work with the current layout, or
better it is quite uncommon, I thought about it yesterday and came up
with the following idea about restructuring the layout. 

Possible new layout:
../texlive/
	all/
	texlive-bin/
	texlive-base/
	texlive-doc/
	texlive-lang/
	texlive-extra/

We will split the tpm2deb.pl script into three parts:
- a common part containing the necessary scripts for reading config
  files etc etc
- a script which generates a source package
	this should be in pseudo code
		cp -a all texlive-bin-$version
		cp -a texlive-bin/* texlive-bin-$version/
		create_rules_file > texlive-bin-$version/debian/rules
		create_control_file > texlive-bin-$version/debian/control
		create_override_files
	this should be enough and quite simple. The creation of the
	rules file is already done with eperl, the control files is the
	complicated part as it needs the tpm2deb.cfg stuff.
- a script which make the binary part, ie installation of files, 
	creation of maintainer scripts, ... as it is done now
(For this perl par I would need some help in how to inport/export perl
stuff and to write the common modules)


Now, what are the advantages of the new layout:
- clearer layout, easier to handle for someone who already knows about
  debian packages
- clean way of generating a source package, not much magic necessary
- most files are still shared between the packages in the all dir,
  no need to edit it in 5 places

disadvantages:
if we decide to
	. add a new source package
	. move a binary package around between source packages
	. i.e. everything related to the content of the packages
we have to be careful. The nice thing with the current way is that
the tpm2deb.cfg file actually defines everything, from the number
of source packages, which bin packages are build, which bin packages
belong to which source package, ...

The reason why I did it this way was that at the beginning it was
completely unclear how the final layout will be. So I wanted to be able
to change things in *one* place (the config file) and be gone.

Well, for 2005 we don't have to think about this as changes will not
happen, but for 2006 ... it might be that we have to make those
shuffling/changes again. But of course we could do this in the new
proposed layout, too.


So please, tell me your opinion on what you think.
 

PS: If you have a better idea than the "all" dir please tell me, but so
many files are shared between all the packages that I don't want to
update them by hand.
 	
Best wishes

Norbert

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Dr. Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>                    Università di Siena
Debian Developer <preining@debian.org>                         Debian TeX Group
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