[tex-live] Re: Debian-TeXlive Proposal II

Gerben Wierda Gerben.Wierda at rna.nl
Mon Jan 31 08:59:22 CET 2005


On 29 Jan 2005, at 21:28, Frank Küster wrote:

> karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) schrieb:
>
>>     I only suggested that the _Debian_ packages of tex-live and of 
>> teTeX
>>     do it the same way, and I would drop the separation.
>>
>> I don't see the benefit of Debian rearranging the original source in
>> this major way.  Do you just not like /usr/share/texmf-dist?
>
>> From the point of view of a Debian package, it's just a useless
> separation. When I first decided not to use it, I only thought about
> teTeX on Debian.  And since teTeX is a little different on every 
> system,
> I didn't care to drop that (for me) useless duplication. Well, I might
> change my mind. But up to now, I have not yet read any convincing
> reasoning why I should use texmf-dist.
>
>> (Personally I think /usr/TeX makes a lot more sense, would be less
>> implementation work and better for users, but I know that's not going 
>> to
>> go anywhere.)
>
> And that's good. Every software that has some plugins, add-ons or
> whatever would want a directory in /usr.
>
>> One big hypothetical -- if there was another TeX distribution (e.g.,
>> miktex) that was available on debian, it could reuse (and depend on)
>> texmf-dist packages, but you wouldn't want to try to somehow use part 
>> of
>> texmf from different binaries.  Ok, it doesn't exist today, but ...
>
> I don't see the problem - that could be done without texmf-dist,
> too. tex-live-binary packages would install their corresponding pool
> files into TEXMFMAIN/web2c, and conflict with teTeX's or miktex's 
> binary
> packages. teTeX's texmf packages would install their TeX input files
> into TEXMFMAIN/tex, TEXMFMAIN/fonts and so on (and possibly some in
> TEXMFMAIN/web2c),

This assumes. My distribution system does not have it, nor am I going 
to implement it. Too vulnerable given the philosophy of my installer 
(which partly is that it is not the *only* way software is installed on 
the system). So, if two packages would share dropping files in the same 
directory, I am lost, because I then cannot remove old before 
unarchiving new.

Anyway, I like the separation of the tree which is produced by make 
install in the sources and the rest. It is kind if clean. Having one 
unified tree doesw not improve matters much afaics.

G



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