[tex-live] Installing TL breaks Ubuntu

Sanjoy Mahajan sanjoy at mrao.cam.ac.uk
Mon May 14 04:57:57 CEST 2007


Because of situations like what you describe, I never like to install
software by hand if there are debian packages for it.  The Debian
texlive 2007 packages don't quite work on Ubuntu (due to libpoppler
misery), but I do the following to get them to work:

1. Add these lines to /etc/apt/sources.list and do 'apt-get update'

deb-src http://www.tug.org/texlive/Debian/ src/
deb http://www.tug.org/texlive/Debian/ context/
deb http://www.tug.org/texlive/Debian/ tl2007/
deb http://www.tug.org/texlive/Debian/ luatex/
deb http://www.tug.org/texlive/Debian/ lmodern/

2. Then (choosing /var/tmp/tlrebuild as a convenient directory):

  mkdir /var/tmp/tlrebuild
  cd /var/tmp/tlrebuild
  apt-get build-dep texlive-bin
  apt-get source texlive-bin
  cd texlive-bin-2007
  /* edit debian/patches/series to comment out (by adding a '#' at the
     beginning of the line) the 30_libpoppler line */
  dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b
  cd ..

and you'll see lots of .deb packages that have just been made.  Now
grab a tex-common 1.7 package from Debian unstable:

  wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/t/tex-common/tex-common_1.7_al
l.deb
  sudo dpkg --dry-run -i *.deb

to see whether all the pkgs (the ones you built plus the tex-common)
will install nicely.  If they do:

  sudo dpkg -i *.deb

-Sanjoy

`Not all those who wander are lost.' (J.R.R. Tolkien)


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