TeTeX and TeXLive

Hiroki Sato hrs at FreeBSD.org
Sun Dec 16 08:06:40 PST 2007


Nikola Lečić <nikola.lecic at anthesphoria.net> wrote
  in <20071216162223.4c67df57 at anthesphoria.net>:

ni> I'm curious to hear more about your ideas related to this partition of
ni> "full" part: what USE_TEX actually does? Invokes parts of TeXLive
ni> install scripts? For example, if I want to install Omega -- is it one
ni> port or meta-port? -- how the integration happens?

 "core" or "full" in USE_TEX specifies the port's dependency in an
 easier way, and mainly for TeX-related ports maintainer.  Omega will
 be a port which has a USE_TEX=foo line, and when you install the
 Omega port, necessary (minimum) packages will also be installed by
 the line.  

ni> (And BTW, what source are you using for your work? 2007 release or
ni> current SVN version?)

 Both.  Basically I am using the 2007 release and importing bug fixes
 from the current SVN repo.

ni> (a) They have so many micro-packages, but as for a lot of software
ni>     included, TeXLive behaves like a distro: projects are nearly
ni>     independent. For example, TeXLive source can be compiled with ~100
ni>     --without-AAAs. Among these AAAs are large projects such as
ni>     bibTeX, Aleph/Omega, pdfTeX, pdfeTeX, XeTeX... Can a single separate
ni>     port be created for each addition of this kind?

 I think it is better to create a separate port for each software, and
 it is possible.  In print/teTeX-base, dviware (dvipsk and xdvik) is
 disabled during the building stage, and print/dvipsk-tetex is used as
 a dependency, for example.

ni> (b) Update of independent projects. I shall take XeTeX as example:
ni>     XeTeX-0.996 that is included in TeXLive2007 is very old. New devel
ni>     version (0.997) exists for a long time and users are very
ni>     interested in it because it's very stable and contains some amazing
ni>     features (Graphite support, Unicode math typesetting, etc.).
ni> 
ni>     XeTeX-devel can be compiled against existing TexLive2007, but it
ni>     asks for some experience, more than average TeX user has. That's the
ni>     space for FreeBSD port: a possibility to have ports such as
ni>     print/xetex-devel would be great because some users don't want to
ni>     wait 2008 to update it through new TeXLive. This goes for many other
ni>     projects which are actively developed. In the case of XeTeX, this
ni>     means that we could have:
ni> 
ni>       print/xetex       (TeXLive core rebuilt with --with-xetex)
ni>       print/xetex-devel (third-party XeTeX source, with independent
ni>                          install scripts specially tweaked for
ni>                          FreeBSD port if necessary)
ni>       devel/libgraphite (currently used by XeTeX-devel only, but
ni>                          usable for many other non-TeX projects,
ni>                          therefore ported and maintained intependently)
ni> 
ni>     Of course, these -devel ports would be a challenge for maintainers,
ni>     but it would be great to have some kind of infrastructural
ni>     relationship between print/BBB (officially in TeXLive) and
ni>     BBB-devel ports.
ni> 
ni>     What do you think about some kind of support like this for replacing
ni>     of old parts of "full" part with new versions and how does your
ni>     working version behave regarding this?

 Yes, replacing a part of TeXLive has to be supported.  One of the
 reasons why a separate port print/dvipsk-tetex is created is almost
 the same.  As long as it works correctly, there is no problem that
 newer version is installed as a dependency of TeXLive port in the
 FreeBSD ports tree, I think.

 Although my idea is not fixed yet, in the previously explained
 framework, which package is installed can be controlled by using a
 knob such as TEX=texlive2007only ("pure TeXLive2007") or TEX=texlive
 ("TeXLive2007 + updated software").  This knob is for users, not for
 port maintainers like USE_TEX.

-- 
| Hiroki SATO

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