[tex-live] new install concept for TeXLive

[Sebastian Rahtz]

Peter Flynn writes:
 > > (Fabrice is working on the Windows end; one result should be to make
 > > initializing the setup faster).
 > 
 > I don't suppose there's ever any risk of the install interface
 > being broadly the same for both?

sure, one day, in theory. but not soon, unless Fabrice pulls
off a major miracle and writes an install that compiles under Linux etc...

 > This is fine, except I would think the default should include
 > a little more than essential plus latex so that newcomers end
 > up with a system that will at least process a significant
 > subset of documents. Perhaps add bib, books, graphics, math,
 > and psfonts. Difficult call. Hard to know where to stop.

quite. but look at the details of them - "latex" does include basic
psfonts, natbib etc. "math" is perhaps more controversial, maybe AMS
should be part of "latex"

 > A-Z and a-z is 52 :-) Plus 0-9 is 62. OK, I understand.
 > 
you guesssed. and omit rqrQ

 > Umm. That would be needed, I think. It's pretty much expected
 > behaviour a la RPM.

yes, but
 a) the dependency information is so weak, its hardly worth having
 b) write me some shell script code to inplement it...

 > > 3. the language support is misleading. If you ask for "finnish", I
 > >    do not edit language.dat to uncomment Finnish hyphenation.
 > 
 > Do you feel this must be done?

yes, and it is done now. its nice. do an

 install-pkg --collection=french

and your language.dat is rebuilt

 > > The current Unix/Linux install needs a complete rewrite, of course,
 > > incorporating an XML parser, if anyone out there has some spare
 > > programming capacity (remembering that it has to work on all and any
 > > Unix systems).
 > 
 > What's the installer written in?

"sh"

 > > The big new project, which I believe is now feasible, is a proper
 > > package management system, allowing the user to add, remove and
 > > update packages.
 > 
 > Dare I suggest we should seriously look at using something extant
 > rather than writing our own, if possible?

you can suggest away. since its unlikely to be me who does the work....

s