[tex-k] Patch for a bug in mktexlsr.pl

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2024-06-26 at 21:30:19 +0200, Martin Vath wrote:

 > On Wed, 26 Jun 2024, Norbert Preining wrote:
 > > On Tue, 25 Jun 2024, Martin Vath wrote:
 > >> I am a Gentoo user, and texlive-2023 under Gentoo creates
 > >> quite a number of symlinks from /usr/bin to .pl files:
 > >
 > > Can you send me (personal email) the list of files in the gentoo
 > > texlive-2023 package (or point me where I can find that)?
 > 
 > I already reported a Gentoo bug; feel free to comment there
 > if my report is wrong: https://bugs.gentoo.org/934975

Hi Martin,
it seems that I can comment 24 hrs after creating an account.  Thus
I think that you can react much faster.

 > The ebuild (a bash script containing functions called by the
 > package manager for installation) is here:
 > 
 > <https://github.com/gentoo-mirror/gentoo/blob/stable/
 > app-text/texlive-core/texlive-core-2023-r9.ebuild>
 > 
 > (click the "Raw" button to get the plain text file.)
 > 
 > Crucial for our discussion is the content of the
 > TEXLIVE_MODULE_BINSCRIPTS variable in lines 83-111:
 > 
 > These are linked (without appendix) in the order they occur
 > in line 458 of the script: The helper function
 > dobin_texmf_scripts used in this line is defined in
 > line 161 of the file
 > <https://github.com/gentoo-mirror/gentoo/blob/stable/
 > eclass/texlive-common.eclass>
 > 
 > Note in particular that TEXLIVE_MODULE_BINSCRIPTS
 > contains both lines
 > 
 >  	texmf-dist/scripts/texlive/mktexlsr
 >  	texmf-dist/scripts/texlive/mktexlsr.pl
 > 
 > but the later symlink will overwrite the former symlink
 > (as the appendix is removed for the symlink).
 > 
 > So if I understood correctly, the order of these two
 > lines should be reverted (or the latter line removed
 > from TEXLIVE_MODULE_BINSCRIPTS).

No!  The symlink to texmf-dist/scripts/texlive/mktexlsr.pl has to be
*removed* without substitution from TEXLIVE_MODULE_BINSCRIPTS.

The Perl script is needed on Windows only because we can't execute
shell scripts there.  And it's well maintained and tested (maybe not
by Norbert because he's on Unix for reasons I understand very well).
At least no Windows user complained so far.

A symlink to the Perl script mktexlsr.pl should *never* be created on
any Unix system.

 > Is there anything else which is ÒobviouslyÓ wrong?

No, but I'm wondering how all this can happen.  Gentoo is a source
distribution where everything is compiled from scratch.  When I
compile TeX Live on Unix myself, only a symlink to the shell script is
created. This is expected behavior.

Thus I suppose that a Gentoo developer stumbled over the Perl script
and thought that it had been overlooked by TeX Live developers, not
knowing that it's only needed on Windows.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                            Phone: +49-511-3373112
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