[tex-live] from source

[Karl Berry]

Hi Darel,

    With the Tetex source package, I was able to downloaded it and when
    it was make and make installed it gave a complete system.

Correct.

    I get the impression that TexLive can not do this.  Am I wrong?

You are not wrong.  make install in the TL sources builds the binaries,
but does not create a usable support tree.  Because (as George said) the
TL support tree is much much larger than in teTeX, and maintained in
other ways.

    Or who can I accomplish this?

rsync the TL Master tree, then manually copy the binaries into place.  I
believe I wrote about this in an earlier reply.

Or, if you don't want to deal with that, get the TL 2005 CD or DVD from
a user group for a few dollars (or get a friend to send one to you, or
whatever), install it that way, and then you can copy your cygwin
binaries into the resulting bin directory.  The current sources should
work fine with the 05 tree -- Staszek and I have made lots of updates
since the 05 release, but nothing critical or that should cause
compatibility problems.

Does any of that help?

Best,
Karl