[tex-live] TeXLive-CD/DVD (Installation)

[David Kastrup]

Oliver Bandel <oliver at first.in-berlin.de> writes:

> On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 12:42:20AM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>> Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> writes:
>> 
>> >   > Also I thought about using tgz-files instead of a
>> >   > directory-structure. This could be used for faster copying the
>> >   > data, but the disadvantage is, that there is no easy way to run
>> >   > the programs from the CD/DVD then, so the texlive than is !=
>> >   > live...
>> >
>> > Yes, installing from the CD which contains .zip files is significantly
>> > faster.  As far as I remember it takes 25 minutes here.  But as you
>> > said yourself, the DVD contains a live system.
>> 
>> Well, tar files are structured with one block (512 bytes) of file
>> header followed by file content.  If one has a file system full of tar
>> files, one can create shadow directory entries for the contents as
>> long as every block is addressable.
> [...]
>
> What do you mean with "shadow directories"?

The CD will look like a bunch of tar files _plus_ a bunch of unpacked
files, but both taking up the same space on the DVD.  When accessed as
tar files, the read order will be strictly sequential.

> Is there a possibility to select files from a tar-archive
> in arbitrary access? Or must such a tool be written?

It seems like I was not able to clad my proposal into understandable
terms.  I do not know how to do this better.

-- 
David Kastrup