Re: Questions about MiKTeX package manager for Debian
Paul Gevers <paul@climbing.nl> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am currently working on packaging the MiKTeX-tools for Debian, which
> consists mainly of a LaTeX package manager. (I hope you know the
> tools.) Because MiKTeX pulls the packages from CTAN I was wondering if
> you can tell me how TeXlive (which if I am correct also works from the
> CTAN), works with licensing/copyrights,
Manual checking. We're not actually sure that we've already identified
every non-free bit and taken it out.
> because this is a large issue
> with Debian. Someone [1] suggested to ask here.
Of course it's an issue to have only DFSG-free software packaged in
Debian. But how does that affect a package manager? Well, it would be
really cool if the package manager was able to display the license of
package I am about to download. But it doesn't affect its freeness
which license data it downloads have.
> By the way, how do you feel about such a LaTeX package manager for
> Debian? Do you think it might be useful? Or does TeXlive include a
> manager which does the same thing? I read somewhere that TeXlive is
> also (partly) based on MiKTeX.
Answering backwards, last question first: No, I don't think TeXliv is
based on MikTeX. It's based on teTeX, and teTeX and MikTeX may have some
common roots - although I think that rather has MikTeX taken over some
ideas from teTeX, and then developped much further.
TeXLive Upstream does have a user interface for selecting packages from
the installation media, but it doesn't update from CTAN or install
additional packages. It only handles the packages included when the
particular TeXLive version was released. Therefore, it is not included
in the Debian packages - we have our Debian texlive packages (which are
not based on individual CTAN packages, but collections) and aptitude
etc. for installing them.
I do think that a package manager for updating individual packages and
for installing add-on packages (new on CTAN, non-free, or not on CTAN at
all) would be a nice thing to have. As far as I know, TeXLive upstream
maintainers already work on such a feature (maybe even with MikTeX-like
automatic package installation), but I'm not sure about it's status. I'd
be surprised if it would be already in the soon-to-be-released 2008
version.
Therefore, having such a package manager in Debian might be a good idea,
too. However, be aware that it is not trivial to integrate the package
manager with the TeX installation on Debian. I'm sure you've already
studied the Debian TeX Policy; it provides for the TEXMF trees you need,
but there's more to do.
In particular, I don't think you should call the binary package
miktex-tools. I'm not used to all of them, but it seems that what you
mainly want to make available for Debian is mpm? I guess we do not want
initexmf in Debian.
As for the license, I guess you looked at the wrong place, on the Web
site. You should have looked in the source tarball. There you'd find
files named "COPYING", which unfortunately just contain a copy of the
GPL, along with the instructions below it telling the author what he
should have done...
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
Reply to: