TeXLive merge into FreeBSD ports tree - FreeBSD project idea

[Christopher J. Ruwe]

On Sun, 17 Jun 2012 02:01:35 -0400
David Schultz <das at FreeBSD.ORG> wrote:

> On Wed, May 30, 2012, Aldis Berjoza wrote:
> > On Sat, 26 May 2012 22:45:37 +1200
> > Sam Lin <sam.lin4ml at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > >  Hi FreeBSD fellows,
> > > 
> > > Those who are using LaTeX on FreeBSD must know that tetex has been
> > > discontinued years ago and that TeXLive is now recommended,
> > > however TeXLive has never been merged in the ports tree on
> > > FreeBSD and that tetex is still used on FreeBSD ports. Although
> > > there have been some "customized" work so that FreeBSD users can
> > > install and use TeXLive on FreeBSD machine (for example,
> > > http://code.google.com/p/freebsd-texlive/wiki/Installing), this is
> > > quite confusing and may still cause conflict on the system side
> > > when using or maintaining it.
> > > 
> > > There has also been years of gossips that a Japanese developer
> > > Hiroki Sato (hrs at freebsd) has been working on this matter for the
> > > last years and therefore the FreeBSD admin panel don't want
> > > anyone else to work on this and merge it into the ports tree.
> > > 
> > > I actually contacted Hiroki Sato in the beginning of last year
> > > (2011) regarding this, and in his reply he said that there had
> > > been several technical issues but most of them had been solved
> > > and almost ready to merge into the port tree, and that he was
> > > planning to go forward after the 8.2/7.4 releases (one or two
> > > weeks later from that time stage) are out. However, more than a
> > > year has passed since then and still nothing happened. I tried to
> > > contact him several times after that (email, tweet, etc) but
> > > haven't heard anything back from him at all.
> > > 
> > > Is TeXLive really going to be merged into the FreeBSD ports tree
> > > as Hiroki Sato mentioned previously? Or is this just a myth??
> > > 
> > > I am now thinking that this should be put into the "FreeBSD
> > > Project ideas List" [http://wiki.freebsd.org/IdeasPage].
> > > 
> > > Regards,
> > > Sam
> > >
> > 
> > Hey, Sam!
> > 
> > I which TeXLive would be merged in FreeBSD ports. Romain is doing
> > great job maintaining it. And it work, And it work now. In fact it
> > works for more than a year.
> 
> I have used his TeXLive ports through portshaker for a while.
> They work pretty well, but there are some issues due to the fact
> that the TeXLive folks have some strange ideas.  For one, TeXLive
> is split into over 2000 packages, many of which are tiny; the
> FreeBSD package system doesn't handle that very well.  For another,
> TeXLive now has its own (dubious) package manager, tlmgr, which
> doesn't play well with other package management systems.
> 
> I'm not a ports committer, but perhaps a good first step to
> getting TeXLive working better in FreeBSD is to introduce a
> TeTeX vs TeXLive knob in the ports tree so that people don't
> wind up accidentally clobber their TeXLive install when TeTex
> gets pulled in as a dependency.
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When I was using Linux, my favourite distro was Gentoo. Packages on
Gentoo are installed in a fashion very alike to FreeBSD - in fact,
Gentoos portage was modeled after FreeBSD ports.

In portage, there is a knob package_provided meaning that the package
referenced as being provided is installed externally and that portage
does not need to resolve said dependancy, as it is already there.

I do not know of a similar FreeBSD-construct, but have really wished for
something alike to stop the pulling in of the teTeX-tree.

Cheers,
-- 
Christopher
TZ: GMT + 2h
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