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

[Frank Küster]

LUK ShunTim <shuntim.luk at polyu.edu.hk> wrote:

> Norbert Preining wrote:
>> Hi Alex, hi Frank! Hi all!
>> 
>> ATM a new set of binaries and sources are uploaded to tug.org. They
>> should be there in about 3h, see
>> 	http://www.tug.org/texlive/debian.html
>> 
>
> [snipped]
>
> I'm putting in my 2 cents as a user.
>
> I started using texlive (instead of tetex) on a new notebook pc for a
> couples of days without any problem. As it is, texlive conflicts with
> the tetex stuff -- tetex-bin, ... and texlive-texinfo conflicts with
> texinfo. However, there are debian packages that depends on them. Is it
> correct to say that now texlive provides the capabilities of at least
> tetex-bin, tetex-base and texinfo? (I think so but I'm not 100% sure.)
> If so, it would be great if it can be worked out that the dependency can
> now be provided by texlive (texlive-basicbin provides tetex-bin, for
> example). Perhaps this has to involve the tetex maintainers as well.

Provides works only for virtual packages (or for packages that
disappear, Conflicts/Replaces/Provides), and tetex-bin is obviously not
a virtual package, it's quite real.

So the solution would be to file bugs against the packages that depend
on one of the tetex-packages, or texinfo, and ask to add to the Depends
on the respective texlive package as an alternative, as in 

before:
Depends: texinfo 
after:
Depends: texinfo | texlive-texinfo

Of course it would be best to really check that the texlive package
provides the complete functionality.  E.g. if a package depends on
tetex-extra because it needs two style files that are in separate
texlive packages, it would be

before:
Depends: tetex-extra
after:
Depends: tetex-extra | texlive-foo, tetex-extra | texlive-bar

please be sure to put the texlive packages after the or bar |, so that
the buildd continue using tetex.


As for texinfo, the package in Debian is missing texi2pdf and therefore
prevents teTeX-3.0 from entering unstable until it is updated.  If you
(Norbert and Alex) think the texlive-texinfo package is okay (maybe I'll
have a look at it this evening), then please consider contacting the
texinfo maintainer in Debian for taking over texinfo, and/or uploading
the package to the NEW queue. 

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer