[tex-live] texlive install overwrites /usr/bin/man

[Bruce Dubbs]

Norbert Preining wrote:
> On Fr, 18 Nov 2011, Bruce Dubbs wrote:
>> Removes $bindir/man or e.g. /usr/bin/man
> 
> Did you run 
> 	./Build
> ?

It fails for me.  I don't have Xorg installed and ./Build does not seem
to have a way to work around that without major hacking.  It does appear 
to just be a wrapper around ./configure && make

> If not, why don't you PLEASE read 
> 	source/README
> ?

OK, I did.  The kindest thing I can say about your install procedure is
that it is non-standard.  The vast majority of open source packages are 
built with  ./configure && make && make install. Your Build wraps around 
./configure that makes adding many of the options relatively difficult.

Here are my observations:

  --without-x is incomplete.  It does not disable xdvipdfmx which 
requires x.  The problem with xdvipdfmx is not identified until well 
into the make pahase.

   ./configure does not honor many options, for example --datarootdir is 
   ignored.

   The install process puts many files in unexpected places compared to
other open source directories.  For example, using --prefix=/usr, the 
/usr/bin directory has many links to ../texmf-dist/scripts/.  That 
translates to /usr/texmf-dist/scripts/ which is not in compliance with 
the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.  A more reasonable location for 
scripts would be /usr/share/texlive/scripts or /usr/lib/texlib/scripts.

   ./configure ignores --mandir.  Placing man files (with --prefix=/usr) 
in /usr/bin/../texmf/doc/man is not only non-standard, but removes the 
/usr/bin/man executable program.  The man program cannot find the tex 
man pages without an update to the MANPATH.  It would seem much more 
reasonable to just place the man pages in /usr/share/man.

Other documentation should go into /usr/share/doc/texlive

   info files should be placed in /usr/share/info, not 
/usr/texmf/doc/info.  Again --infodir is not honored.

   -- Bruce Dubbs
      bdubbs at linuxfromscratch.org