[arch-general] texlive (again?)
Hello Archers, I want to bring up the TeX distributions issue. Current status: - tetex in extra: unmaintained (upstream) though still usable, some parts are already getting outdated (pdftex, some latex packages); - texlive in community: firmicus keeps it pretty up to date, the dist itself is actively developed. Proposal: Switch to texlive eventually officially (for now keeping tex-related pkgs in community). How it can be done: - from the dev side: 1) "officially" announce that the switch *is* going to happen. 2) move tetex and all packages depending on it from extra to community (that's only: kile, latex2html, lyx, texmacs) (the trouble is that these makedep on tetex: evince, kdegraphics, yodl; but maybe just keep tetex on the build machine for a time being?) - from TUs: 3) gradually replace tetex deps by texlive deps in community packages - from users: 4) gradually replace tetex deps in AUR by texlive Comments: - 3) and 4) don't need to happen instantly - we'll just have 2 tex dists at the same "level" in community for a while - note that none of the above programs link anything against tetex, they just need working tex compiler (which texlive definitely provides), so they don't even need to be recompiled - the official statement is important, so that we can nag maintainers to change dependencies ;) - there's been on/off-going discussion about this on the forums (http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=358172 - tomk has said "Regarding the possibility of bringing texlive into the official repos, there are currently two missing ingredients among the existing dev team: interest and time. AFAIK none of us is a habitual tex user, and that would be the first requirement." - so this proposal asks for the opposite: bring the so far official tetex down to community, to level it out with texlive and make the switch powered by the users possible.) What do *you* think? PS. Sorry for the long e-mail (about 15-times longer than I usually write). -- Jan Spakula
Jan Spakula schrieb:
Proposal: Switch to texlive eventually officially (for now keeping tex-related pkgs in community).
Switch? Isn't that your job?
How it can be done: - from the dev side: 1) "officially" announce that the switch *is* going to happen.
There is no such thing as a "switch". You use what you install.
2) move tetex and all packages depending on it from extra to community (that's only: kile, latex2html, lyx, texmacs) (the trouble is that these makedep on tetex: evince, kdegraphics, yodl; but maybe just keep tetex on the build machine for a time being?)
We could make sure that either these packages depend on a virtual "tex" package that is provided by texlive or make texlive provide tetex. As stated by you, nobody links against anything in tetex, they only need the tex compiler, so this would be a viable solution.
- there's been on/off-going discussion about this on the forums (http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=358172 - tomk has said "Regarding the possibility of bringing texlive into the official repos, there are currently two missing ingredients among the existing dev team: interest and time. AFAIK none of us is a habitual tex user, and that would be the first requirement."
Texlive is a bitch to maintain. Firmicus is willing to do it (he came into the TU team only for that). I appreciate that and will not move it out of community, for as long as he maintains it, we have it. The only thing we need to do is fix the dependencies for the aforementioned packages.
Thomas Bächler schrieb:
2) move tetex and all packages depending on it from extra to community (that's only: kile, latex2html, lyx, texmacs) (the trouble is that these makedep on tetex: evince, kdegraphics, yodl; but maybe just keep tetex on the build machine for a time being?)
We could make sure that either these packages depend on a virtual "tex" package that is provided by texlive or make texlive provide tetex.
Ha! texlive-core already provides tetex. Therefore, you can use all applications that depend on tetex with texlive instead. This situation is good enough for me.
Excerpts from Thomas Bächler's message of Mon Apr 21 04:45:06 -0500 2008:
Thomas Bächler schrieb:
We could make sure that either these packages depend on a virtual "tex" package that is provided by texlive or make texlive provide tetex.
Ha! texlive-core already provides tetex. Therefore, you can use all applications that depend on tetex with texlive instead. This situation is good enough for me.
I'm relatively content with the situation as well (with using texlive and all). [I'm fed up with people bitching about this on the forum, so I decided to try to bring it up.] The thing is that now people need to know in the first place that they should/could want to use texlive, since if they just install something that needs tex, it pulls automatically tetex. That's essentially the "issue" I'm trying to address. I guess a cheap way out which would make me happy would be to at least add a line saying "This tex distribution is currently unmaintaned upstream, there is an alternative (texlive) in the community repo." in tetex's install script. Jan -- Jan Spakula
On Montag, 21. April 2008 11:45 Thomas Bächler wrote:
Ha! texlive-core already provides tetex. Therefore, you can use all applications that depend on tetex with texlive instead. This situation is good enough for me.
But there is still the problem that if you do "pacman -S kile" (or auctex, lyx etc.) at example than i think tetex will get installed instead of texlive. If i'm wrong than forget this. I can't speak for Jan but his "switch" means for me more a "having only texlive". You be right that it doesn't matter for me too in which repo texlive stays but what about removing tetex from the extra repo to avoid that an unmaintained package get installed? See you, Attila P.S: "finddeps tetex" output: depends: /var/abs/community/lib/python-pyx depends: /var/abs/community/network/yfklog depends: /var/abs/community/office/auctex depends: /var/abs/community/office/lilypond depends: /var/abs/community/office/prosper depends: /var/abs/community/office/texvc depends: /var/abs/community/science/gri makedepends: /var/abs/extra/evince makedepends: /var/abs/extra/kdegraphics depends: /var/abs/extra/kile depends: /var/abs/extra/latex2html depends: /var/abs/extra/lyx depends: /var/abs/extra/texmacs makedepends: /var/abs/extra/yodl
Guys this discussion is about to, if it has not already, become circular. That's o.k. too, but you guys are not comprehending the information in some of these emails. Um, the answer to this is the same for ANY two or more packages that may be used to do the same thing. And that has already been answered.-> Use the power of the declaratory fields that can exist in the PKGBUILDs involved. Also, please do NOT get hung up on which repo a package exists in. In the end it usually does not matter. And "tetex" (or it's 'replacement') is, as far as I can tell, one of those programs wherein it does not matter. Very best regards; Bob Finch
On Montag, 21. April 2008 11:45 Thomas Bächler wrote:
Ha! texlive-core already provides tetex. Therefore, you can use all applications that depend on tetex with texlive instead. This situation is good enough for me.
But there is still the problem that if you do "pacman -S kile" (or auctex, lyx etc.) at example than i think tetex will get installed instead of texlive. If i'm wrong than forget this.
I can't speak for Jan but his "switch" means for me more a "having only texlive". You be right that it doesn't matter for me too in which repo texlive stays but what about removing tetex from the extra repo to avoid that an unmaintained package get installed?
See you, Attila
P.S: "finddeps tetex" output: depends: /var/abs/community/lib/python-pyx depends: /var/abs/community/network/yfklog depends: /var/abs/community/office/auctex depends: /var/abs/community/office/lilypond depends: /var/abs/community/office/prosper depends: /var/abs/community/office/texvc depends: /var/abs/community/science/gri makedepends: /var/abs/extra/evince makedepends: /var/abs/extra/kdegraphics depends: /var/abs/extra/kile depends: /var/abs/extra/latex2html depends: /var/abs/extra/lyx depends: /var/abs/extra/texmacs makedepends: /var/abs/extra/yodl
Liviu Librescu - În veci pomenirea lui. (May his memory be eternal.)
Thomas Bächler a écrit :
Thomas Bächler schrieb:
2) move tetex and all packages depending on it from extra to community (that's only: kile, latex2html, lyx, texmacs) (the trouble is that these makedep on tetex: evince, kdegraphics, yodl; but maybe just keep tetex on the build machine for a time being?)
We could make sure that either these packages depend on a virtual "tex" package that is provided by texlive or make texlive provide tetex.
Ha! texlive-core already provides tetex. Therefore, you can use all applications that depend on tetex with texlive instead. This situation is good enough for me.
So you assumed I had not thought about it! ;-) Seriously, I am happy with texlive in community. I have already prepared a test package of texlive-bin from the svn repo, in preparation for the forthcoming release of "TeXLive 2008". Everything compiled just fine. Things have improved upstream and the maintainance will be simplified (which is good for me!). I'll also move the installation from /opt to /usr, which will things simpler. And users will soon have bleeding-edge binaries of pdftex, xetex, luatex and even xindy. If you choose to keep tetex in extra, I would suggest you add a big warning message in the install scriptlet that advises the user that it is outdated and not maintained, and that they may probably prefer to install texlive from community instead (just my 2¢)... F
Excerpts from François Charette's message of Mon Apr 21 13:37:01 -0500 2008:
Seriously, I am happy with texlive in community. I have already prepared a test package of texlive-bin from the svn repo, in preparation for the forthcoming release of "TeXLive 2008". Everything compiled just fine. Things have improved upstream and the maintainance will be simplified (which is good for me!). I'll also move the installation from /opt to /usr, which will things simpler. And users will soon have bleeding-edge binaries of pdftex, xetex, luatex and even xindy.
If you choose to keep tetex in extra, I would suggest you add a big warning message in the install scriptlet that advises the user that it is outdated and not maintained, and that they may probably prefer to install texlive from community instead (just my 2¢)...
OK, so it seems to me that the TeX-dependent portion of archlinux community is pretty small and proposed changes (move tetex to community) didn't appeal to DYI nature of Arch. Fine. I'll contact the tetex dev (Jason Chu) with a request to add a texlive info/warning to tetex install script. This change is hopefully small enough and sensible that it would go through. One more piece of "evidence" that something like this would be desirable: today somebody uploaded to AUR a latex package, which a part of texlive-core package - so apparently the person had no idea texlive is around. Best, -- Jan Spakula
Ján Špakula a écrit :
I'll contact the tetex dev (Jason Chu) with a request to add a texlive info/warning to tetex install script. This change is hopefully small enough and sensible that it would go through.
Fine with me
One more piece of "evidence" that something like this would be desirable: today somebody uploaded to AUR a latex package, which a part of texlive-core package - so apparently the person had no idea texlive is around.
This is hard to believe! :) Anyway, I have seen several packages like this on AUR in the past and I have written comments or emailed their maintainers to inform them about texlive (especially during the month after it was released). If you see such packages would you be so kind and write a comment on AUR, or inform me about it (privately or on the aur-general ML)? Thanks, François
Excerpts from Ján Špakula's message of Tue Apr 22 10:35:22 -0500 2008:
I'll contact the tetex dev (Jason Chu) with a request to add a texlive info/warning to tetex install script. This change is hopefully small enough and sensible that it would go through.
Filed: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10256 If you think that it would help, feel free to vote for it :) -- Jan
participants (6)
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Attila
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François Charette
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Jan Spakula
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Ján Špakula
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Thomas Bächler
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