Re: Packaging TeXLive 2008: Source packages
Hi Frank!
On Mi, 14 Jan 2009, Frank Küster wrote:
> Don't know how much I'm back; but I have promised myself, my colleagues
> and my boss to work less this year ;-). And it was fun to think about
You are CRAZY!!!!!
> I haven't yet looked at what you already did and what needs to be done,
> but I had in mind that you said that we would need to make large changes
> anyway, with the tpm files having gone away.
In fact hardly anything hat to be changed. The layout was already that
all the stuff was read in from the TPM files into an intermediate big
hash, and from there all our config changes where applied to the "output
hash".
Now the only thing that had to be rewritten was reading in the tlpdb
instead of the tpm files.
That is in fact already done. And I have already packages ready,
people.debian.org/~preining/TeX/tl2008, but the binaries are missing
since the build system changed. Then I have to work on the patches etc
etc.
But in principle what is in texlive2008 is already more or less able to
build the arch=all packages.
> > - change the source package layout completely, because some things in
> > the -bin soure package would need files from the texmf trees tar ball
> > for bin package creation.
>
> That's a bug in the tarball splitting. A bug that is also a valid reason
> not to use the tarballs as source.
No is it not, because WE do collection -> Debian package transfer, other
dists don't do that. The others have one package with all the binaries
(built form the -bin source ball), and one package for all of the texmf
stuff. And one depends on the other and thats it.
No further splitting into different packages like the collections.
> My memories are a bit different: A BSD guy first asked for that, but a
> couple of other people stepped in and said that they liked the
> idea. Including me.
Maybe the other were happy, but for us it is useless unless we want at
max 2 .deb, one so huge that we will get killed.
> I still think that we should in the long run aim at having sensible
> upstream tarballs that are usable for distributions. IMO, that's the
Since files are organized into packages, and packages are sorted into
collections, and any package can only occur in ONE! collections, the
only sensible splittings are arbitrary partitions of the collections
set. One partition would be only one huge tarball, one would be one
tarball for everything related to one collection, or - like we did -
grouping the collections into related parts.
> But I must say that I was surprised myself by how the splitting was
> done. I think I will bring this up on the tldistro mailing list, once I
> understand TL 2008 better.
See, above.
> Do you mean upstream will provide something like point releases? Anyway,
> I guess if we really want tarballs, it's not to hard to generate them
> scripted.
Probably not. We did that for TL2007 but I never used it, but patched
the stuff in. It was mostly security and some xetex fixes.
With the online updates on a daily basis TL2008 is providing we will not
ship out point releases.
So I still think that the layout as we have it is the best we can do,
and the most adaptable.
But please, try to convince me from something else.
Best wishes
Norbert
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> Vienna University of Technology
Debian Developer <preining@debian.org> Debian TeX Group
gpg DSA: 0x09C5B094 fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76 A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PANT-Y-WACCO (adj.)
The final state of mind of retired colonel before they come to take
him away.
--- Douglas Adams, The Meaning of Liff
Reply to: