TeTeX and TeXLive

[Rick Voland]

Ulrich Spoerlein wrote:
> On Sun, 16.12.2007 at 22:59:55 +0900, Hiroki Sato wrote:
>>  This is a progress report from the current teTeX maintainer who is
>>  trying to update TeX in the ports tree to TeXLive.  As I explained,
>>  if we go with the finer-grained package model, over 1000 ports have
>>  to be added at a time, so testing them should be done in a separate
>>  tree at least.  I hope I will be able to set up a public tree for
>>  testing and collaborative work this month...
>>
>>  Any comments are welcome.  Thanks.
> 
> As I'm not doing any work, my vote doesn't count, but please: Creating
> 2-3 *big* TeXLive ports is certainly wrong, but creating 1000 tiny ports
> is equally wrong. Think about the repo bloat and churn introduced by a
> "single" software like a LaTeX system. It will slow down everything from
> cvs checkout, to index building and pkg_info(1).
> 
> Can't you split the TeXLive Distribution up into say 12 ports? Something
> minimal that can be used by other ports to typeset documentation (how
> common is this, anyway?) and 3-4 big TeXLive ports for the typical TeX
> user.
> 
> Cheers,
> Ulrich Spoerlein



I am also only a user of TeX and friends.

May I suggest some categories for triage?


1) Simple packages like envlab and lettrine are easy to locate and
install afterwards.  So, maybe these packages (and others like
additional fonts) don't need to be in the typical TeXLive port for FreeBSD.

2) Binaries for features like xetex and ConTeXt may be difficult to
install outside the assistance of a port.  I wish recent, stable
versions of these could be included in a port, maybe the main port.

3) For now, the FreeBSD port for musixtex is incompatible with tetex.  I
wish that the various TeXLive components could be designed to be
compatible with each other so that a user could still choose to add
additional features after the initial installation.


These are only suggestions.  Thanks for your work maintaining TeX and
friends for FreeBSD.


---

Rick Voland
rpvoland at spamcop.net