[tex-live] TeXlive for Debian - Comments from DD and Mentor(s)

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Frank!

On Die, 09 Aug 2005, Frank Küster wrote:
> > Is there a list of tetex-base/tetex-extra packages? If yes I could check
> > wether all packages in tetex are also in texlive, and in which
> > sub-package.
> 
> $ dpkg -L tetex-base | grep /usr/share/texmf > TEXMF.base

Well, I wanted a list of CTAN packages, but this will work, too, I
guess.

> > The problem is that texinfo depends on texlive-basic, which in turn
> > depends on texlive-basicbin and texlive-documentation-base, so this
> > would need to pull in all the texlive packages.
> 
> Might be early, but on the other hand preparing an upload for a new
> upstream version of the traditional texinfo package is probably a lot of
> work, too - while you have done most of it already.  And I don't have
> the impression that Josip is particularly interested in texinfo
> currently. 
> 
> I had a look at texlive-texinfo, here are a few remarks:
> 
> - drop the empty preinst

Ok.

> - a manpage for texinfo and pdftexinfo is missing

Are the in the original distribution? If not, do you have them in tetex?
If yes, can I copy them?

> - is usr/share/texmf/fmtutil/format.texinfo.cnf at its place on purpose?
>   It seems to be a copy of /etc/texmf/fmt.d/50texlive-texinfo.cnf

Yup, every tpm can contain a Execute-directive to create a format,
together with a name string, in this case texinfo. The deb-source
creation program and/or the deb build program (both tpm2pl) use this to
collect *all* format snippets of one collection (texlive-...) for this
package. In this case there is only one, but there could be more.

> - do the tpm files in /usr/share/texmf/tpm serve any purpose?

Yes. They describe the packages. In fact they are used to install the
resepctive files from the perforce depot into the debian-source-packjage
and from the debian source package into the binary tree. I could leave
them out of the binary packages, but they may serve some good use,
especially as they describe which CTAN packages are part of a
collection.

> - the info file in /usr/share/doc/texlive-texinfo/info should be put at
>   its proper place and registered to the info system;  see
>   dh_installinfo(1). 

Hmmm, yup. This seems to be some work in the script, but probably not
too much. I don't want to do anything by hand, you know! Up to now all
the source-packages and binary-packages are generated automatically from
the tpm2deb.pl script, which has as few exceptions as possible.

I will see, should be possible.

> - I wouldn't put the pdf and html file put into a subdirectory, but
>   directly into /usr/share/doc/texlive-texinfo/info.  And don't you have
>   texdoc or a similar program?  Then you should either put those files
>   into $TEXMF/doc (in teTeX this is a symlink to /usr/share/doc/texmf,
>   and we should keep this consistent), or create symlinks so that they
>   can be found.

Ahhh, good hint. Up to now I thought that I install all the DocFiles (a
category in the tpm files) into /usr/share/doc/debname/... instead of
/usr/share/texmf/doc/... were the originally are present. 

This means I can leave the files in the place they are normally, and
also create this link. Thanks!

> - why do you conflict with tetex-src - you don't install any 
>   files in /usr/share/texmf/source, do you?

Not in texlive-texinfo, but in other collections. We decided here on the
list that the packages come with their source.

> Overall, this looks as if it shouldn't be too hard to make this a
> replacement for the traditional Debian texinfo package.  I don't know

Again, as above. Some one should review at least:
	texlive-basic
	texlive-basicbin
	texlive-documentation-base
which texlive-texinfo depends on (directly or indirectly).

> Josip's plans about it, but in case he is not interested, uploading this
> as texinfo is probably as easy or easier than doing an update of the
> texinfo package.  It shouldn't be too hard to disable the build of all
> other packages.

In fact I thought about splitting texlive-texinfo into a separate
source-package, but for the time being it was just easier to get it
running and source extracted like this. I can make a seperate source
package, is this what we want?

Would it be possible to install the (texlive-)texinfo package together
with tetex? Would this work out?

Best wishes

Norbert

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Norbert Preining <preining AT logic DOT at>             Università di Siena
sip:preining at at43.tuwien.ac.at                             +43 (0) 59966-690018
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