[tex-live] TL production

[Sebastian Rahtz]

On Sat, 2003-03-15 at 09:32, Staszek Wawrykiewicz wrote:
> I would like to know which decission was really accepted for the TL8 release:
> 1. DVD (full, unpacked TL+CTAN);
> 2. one TL CD ROM with all things compressed;
> 3. both 1. and 2. distributed in one cover.

My plan is to make it _possible_ to produce a compressed CD
and an uncompressed distribution, presumably on DVD. However,
since I don't manage the distribution myself, I am not telling
anyone how they should manage it. On the Unix/Linux/MacOSX side,
I propose to maintain the install scripts for both compressed
and uncompressed form; whether Fabrice can manage that too is
another matter. He and I are both concentrating on making the
"install from compressed" install working.

> 1. DVD equiped machines are very rare yet;
depends on the place. agreed, they are not normal

> 2. CD as only instalable medium is hardly acceptable as `live' release:
>   a) running directly off the CD is quite impossible (we forgot the fact,
>      that TL CD can be also mounted and sourced temporarily for the
>      already existing installation),
>   b) finding/browsing particular macro file or documentation is heavy.
>      Many users liked that feature.
These are sound reasons for having an uncompressed CD available.
But they do not convince me that uncompressed is what the majority
will use.

> I cannot ignore such opinions, and as I always try to see BLU's view,
> instead of the Vizzard's one, I'd like to know the opinions from other
> LUG members. Have they also been investigated in that regard?

yours is the only report, I believe. 

> Just a question: beeing under stress to make the CD `unpacked'
> and really `live',  I can only leave win32 and linux binaries as the most
> frequent systems here (there are only few mac osx users ;-(). 

in Poland, maybe. elsewhere it is widely used! so you'd be making
a special CD anyway....

> Can the rest fit for 1 CD? How can I count/test the whole stuff to fit 
> on 1 CD? 
you use the TPM files to extract each package into a temporary tree
and measure its size.

> The worst variant is to zap texmf/source/ which, in fact, is much bigger
> then working texmf/tex/ :-} Would it be acceptable from `political 
> correctness' point of view? I know that such big change needs remaking
> tpm and list files.

no, thats completely unacceptable. The use of the source tree is not
precise enough. for packages where the only documenatation is the .dtx
file, you lose vital information. why dont I made PDF files from .dtx,
you ask? - because there isn't enough space on the CD!

Fabrice suggests removing cm-super. but a) the replacement isn't
available yet (if it is, send it to me!), and b) that would not make
enough difference. There are so many packages these days. texmf itself
is now over 700 megabytes!


this is not an easily solvable problem. TeX is too big for a CD!
sebastian