[tex-live] Misplaced file(s): mathdots

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Thu May 31 23:38:52 CEST 2007


Hi Dan,

    Subject: [tex-live] Misplaced file(s): mathdots

Will fix, thanks.

    of packaging things for CTAN so that this is less likely to
    happen (apart from a tds ready zip archive)?

The simplest and perhaps best way I can think of is actually
non-technical: in the CTAN announcement, make it clear that the package
works with plain TeX (or whatever).  I wrote a few words about this at
http://tug.org/texlive/pkgcontrib.html.

Perhaps I should explain more.  The way packages actually get into TL is
that I (or whomever) read the CTAN announcements (or mirror listing
updates, but never mind) and run a script to install it from CTAN to TL
(http://tug.org/texlive/pkgupdate.html explains the gory details).  The
default logic is to install *.sty in the runtime and *.tex in the doc
tree, since in the overwhelming majority of cases, the .tex is
documentation.

It is no trouble to override the default, of course, I just have to know
to do it.  The sad truth is, I cannot carefully read every README in
every release (although I try), there are simply too many updates.
Anyway, once it's done once, it is done for future updates -- the logic
is encapsulated in the Build/cdbuild/ctan2tds.pl script.

Another way is to have a Makefile with a texlive: target, but I'm not
sure how well that worked in practice.  I took out the description of
that on the web page, since it seemed almost no one used it.

    I'm considering adding a <packagename>.tds file

That could help in complex cases, since it would give me something to
check my results against.  Just for a misclassified .tex, though, it's
not worth it.

    If I knew the format of a tpm file, 

That wouldn't help.  The tpm files are automatically generated.

Thanks,
k


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