Bug#481606: Questions about MiKTeX package manager for Debian
Hello Norbert,
Just back from the mountains myself.
Norbert Preining wrote:
> Hi Paul,
>
> quick reply, I am half a day off the mountains,
>
> On Di, 15 Jul 2008, Paul Gevers wrote:
>> 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.)
>
> No idea what these tools are. MikTeX is Windows specific AFAIR, and I
> have no idea what they are doing.
The main tool from MiKTeX that also works under Linux is meant to
install/update/uninstall LaTeX packages from a MiKTeX repository. An
additional tool lets you create MiKTeX packages from local LaTeX
packages (not relevant for most people I guess). A third tool shows
information about the package. The rest are aids to these tools.
>> 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
>
> I would say that it is *MAYBE* a good idea, but I guess the problem is
> that
> - where to put the updated packages?
> you don't want to overwrite files installed by the dpkg package
> manager that way, or your system will be messed yompletely.
> And we will NOT accept *any* bug reports anymore since we cannot
> guarantee that we can reproduce that ;-)
> - where to put new packages
> - how to work across updates of TeX Live, where suddenly files in
> TEXMFLOCAL are older than the ones in TEXMFMAIN/texmf-texlive?
>
> Honestly, I don't see a big advantage, since the package manager just
> circumvents the Debian packaging structure, which is *bad* by
> definition.
>
>> manager which does the same thing? I read somewhere that TeXlive is also
>> (partly) based on MiKTeX.
>
> No, definitely not. We use scripts developed by TE for teTeX, and Miktex
> maybe also uses these scripts, other than that there is no interaction.
> Pity for that, but it is not on our (upstream TeX Live) side, since we
> proposed to have a common packaging structure. But the developer of
> MikTeX is not interested in cooperating with TeX Live.
>
> So please first explain what these magic tools should do?
>
> BTW; TL 2008 will have the TeX Live Manager (tlmgr), inlcuding a Perl/Tk
> interface, for managing, updaing etc. No idea how I will integrate that
> one with Debian, enough to do to program itself (what is also my job).
So I guess that the functionality of the TeX Live Manager will be quite
like the functionality of the MiKTeX manager, only the TeX Live one is
integrated into a complete TeX environment. Which gives me the feeling
that getting the MiKTeX-tools into Debian will hardly be worth the
effort, aside from the problems you mention above, which I have not yet
solved in any way.
With kind regards,
Paul Gevers
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