[tex-live] Proposal for a tex-base package

[George White]

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:

> Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> writes on Tue, 17 May 2005
> 18:55:50 +0200 about a proposal for a tex-base package:
> 
> >> ...
> >> ATM I would suggest:
> >>
> >>         /usr/sbin/update-{fmtutil,texmf,updmap}
> >>         /etc/texmf/updmap.d/00updmap.cfg
> >>         /etc/texmf/texmf.d/*
> >>         /etc/texmf/fmt.d/00tetex.cnf
> >> ...
> 
> Can we please get away from the practice of putting stuff in /usr/sbin
> and /etc, in favor of a location like /usr/local/sbin and
> /usr/local/share/etc that can be (and at my site, are) shared across
> hundreds of machines, and mirrored to dozens of other servers?

Distribution maintainers want a basic TeX that will always be there for
use, e.g., in formatting documents by tools such as the R-Project's "R CMD
INSTALL source-package", and is tied to the distro's versioning.  

I assume your local TeX configuration gets bug fixes and updates on a 
different schedule than distro releases, and may use quite different 
default fonts, etc.

What would be nice is a set of dummy packages that satisfy the
dependencies of the package manager but let you use your own version,
e.g., using symbolic links for the above list.  The if a user encounters
a problem they can easily uninstall the tetex-dummy package and install
the one the distro offers.  This should not prevent them continuing to
use the local package for normal work, just ensure that the expected 
bugs are present for things like the R-Project example.


--
George White <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca> <gnw3 at acm.org>
189 Parklea Dr., Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia  B3Z 2G6