Re: Questions about MiKTeX package manager for Debian
Frank Küster scripsit (16.07.2008 16:02)
> 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.
>
Mpm does not display the license of things you are about to install. But
AFAIK, MikTeX claims that to the best of their knowledge, they only package
free stuff. As you know well, "to the best of their knowloedge" is an
important restriction there (I think the situation in MikTeX, upstream TeX
Live and Debian is rather similar wrt to lack of comprehensive and reliable
licence info). They also claim that for them, free means both FSF-free and
DFSG-free (see http://miktex.org/Copying.aspx).
But I agree with you that anyway the licence of the package manager itself and
of the packages it downloads are different issues, it was just for information.
>> 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.
>
Indeed. Of course there are some common roots: Knuth, the CTAN :-) But things
in MikTeX are quite different. Eg, MikTeX is not based on web2c/kpathsea, does
have similar but different tools and architecture for updmap, fmtutil, etc.
TeX Live is far closer to teTeX than MikTeX is.
> 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.
I think so, and I have used a home-compiled mpm for long. But it only install
packages in MikTeX obviously, and I think most of them come from CTAN and all
of them are free (in theory).
> 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.
>
So... surprise! It is in the future TL'08! It's even the main new feature in
this release (with net install) imo. It's quite mpm-like (for the package
management part) and also has a Perl/Tk GUI frontend. It doens't provide an
install-on-the-fly feature though.
I asked Norbert in BachoTeX what he wanted to do with it in Debian and he said
he thought tlmgr should be configured to install updates in TEXMFLOCAL, iirc.
Anyway, you'll probably discuss this with him when he comes back from the
mountains...
I honestly have no idea how tlmgr and mpm can play well together, and whether
mpm has interesting features that tlmgr doesn't.
> 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.
>
I'm not sure initexmf isn't needed but other tools. By the way, maybe mthelp
would be cool to have: it doesn't work exactly as texdoc, and if I personally
prefer the texdoc way, other people may prefer mthelp or want to use both.
Best,
Manuel.
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