[tex-live] TL '11 pretest, binaries packages

[Norbert Preining]

On Mo, 20 Jun 2011, Peter Dyballa wrote:
> TL '11 contains a lot of packages <name>.<ARCH>. Each of these packages 
> <name> exists in a dozen or more variants because so many architectures 
> are supported. Although many of these packages do not contain binaries 
> but scripts, for example in Perl or Python or Ruby or Lua or Java or 
> TclTk/wish, architecture and platform independent, some are just symbolic 
> links. Why do these <ARCH> packages exist?

Because they ship files in the bin/<arch>/ directory.

What is the problem you try to solve?

On Mo, 20 Jun 2011, George N. White III wrote:
> One could imagine having a directory bin/most-archs for scripts, but

Yeah, and making the code even more involved and complicated,
plus making it more difficult for users (suddenly they have to prepend
two paths to the PATH env), and less understandable???

I simply don't get the point of this discussin. I would even accept
*empty* .ARCH package if that would make things easier!

> packages were eliminated?   I can see how they could be a nuisance
> packaging TL for a linux distro where you want to keep as much as
> possible in arch-independent packages.

That is true, but we (putting distro maintainers hat on) have a lot
of burden anyway.

Best wishes

Norbert
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Norbert Preining            preining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
JAIST, Japan                                 TeX Live & Debian Developer
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