[tex-live] Binary names and TeXlive as the default UNIX TeX system (was: Fwd: Polish TexLive Stuff)

Frank Küster frank at kuesterei.ch
Mon Dec 18 12:35:06 CET 2006


Hi all,

as it turned out, the mex case is not a problem at all, at least nothing
that upstream (=this list) should bother with.  However, I'd like to
point out one general issue:

karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) wrote:

> With
> standard TL, it's not an issue because TL binaries are installed in a
> separate tree and users can set their path as they wish, as Kaja wrote.

Since teTeX is no longer developed, TeXlive will progressively become
the default TeX distribution for UNIX-like systems.  This means that
vendors, in particular Linux distributions and BSDs, will start
installing it as part of the system, just as Debian and Ubuntu already
do.  But then you can no longer argue with "binaries are in a separate
tree", since it won't be correct for these cases.

I think TeXlive development should keep this in mind and try to be "a
good citizen", in particular try to cooperatively find solutions with
other software developers/groups in case of binary name conflicts.

Regards, Frank



-- 
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)


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