[tex-live] Matching TL package setups to my own

[Gerben Wierda]

On Aug 24, 2007, at 04:06 , Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

> Karl Berry writes:
>
>>     Scheme-gust and scheme-tetex for instance depend
>>     on both Collections and Packages directly.
>>
>> That's normal and unavoidable.
>
> Karl, sorry, but I totally agree with Gerben and I doubt that it's
> unavoidable.  It is very difficult to write an installer if a scheme
> or collection can contain arbitrary stuff.
>
> It would be nice if a scheme is just a set of collections.  Everything
> would be significantly easier if there would be collections like
> collection-tetex, collection-gust, or collection-xml which contain all
> the required packages.
>
> The fact that schemes contain packages is very nasty indeed.
>
> What Gerben asks for is to provide a reasonable structure.  I totally
> agree with him.  What we have at the moment is horrible.

I think horrible is too hard a word. There are a *lot* of very nice  
things that has been produced. But now that I am actually trying to  
use it I run into stuff.

Here is another one: depends in a TLPOBJ are of the form "Package/ 
foo" or "TLCore/bar". To use that name to get the actual TLPOBJ I  
need to strip the first part.

                 $tlpkgname =~ s/^(Package|TLCore|Documentation| 
Scheme|Collection)\///;
		my $tlpkg = $tlpdb->get_package( $tlpkgname);

I am throwing stuff away but without any ill effect. I do not need it.

What this implies is that we do not have a clear idea about the name  
space it is a mix of assumptions. E.g. is tlpkg name is unique, we do  
not need categories. But if it isn't, then the interface to get a  
package from a db should include category.

I don't care either way, we could have
- object name unique TL-wide, directory information in the list of  
files, no directory-implication in the categories, depends on the  
basis of name
- object name in combination with category unique (category stands  
for a directory like texmf, texmf-doc, etc.), file list without  
subdirectory information, depends on the basis of category and name

As it is now, there is a bit of both assumptions in the setup.

> Karl, if things will remain as messy as they are, I doubt that anybody
> is able to provide a reasonable installer before TL-2008 will be  
> released.

As there is above all redundancy, I guess it will work as is. But  
maintaining it will be more work than with a clean structure.

G