Bug#418983: dh_installtex: format generation mis-conception

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> wrote:

> Solution: Move the parsing code into the postinst script, or better,
> call
> 	fmtutil-sys --all --cnffile /etc/texmf/fmt.d/NNfoobar.cnf
> This way we could also get rid of a lot of code in dh_installtex!!!
>
> Comments?

I think the latter is easier.  The former, however, would offer an
opportunity to cover more cases.  For example, suppose I have
configuration files in fmt.d "20local-omega.cnf" which defines a
customized omega format with my own ini file, and 20local-lualatex.cnf
which defines a lualatex which uses luatex as the engine, but the normal
latex.ini.  Then I would want those formats to be regenerated 

- when the engines change, i.e. texlive-omega runs its postinst

- when latex.ini changes, i.e. tl-latex-base runs its postinst.

This could be done like this:

- at build time, dh_installtex parses the conffile and writes engines
  and ini file names into the postinst

- at install time, the postinst parses fmtutil.cnf and decides which
  formats to recreate.

While this gives some nice features, it's also much more complex code,
and we could as well just inform the user that they need to take care
for locally built formats themselves.  Also, we could use the first
approach (--cnffile /etc/texmf/fmt.d/NNfoobar.cnf) for a quick fix, and
the other one more time for consideration, implementation and testing.

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