[tex-live] Re: Debian-TeXlive Proposal II

Gerben Wierda Gerben.Wierda at rna.nl
Sat Jan 29 12:04:49 CET 2005


On Jan 26, 2005, at 22:10, Karl Berry wrote:

>> Since I didn't see any sense in TEXMFDIST for a Debian package[1], I
>> was inclined not to use it, but keep all files in TEXMFMAIN (plus the
>> generated ones in VARTEXMF). I think we should coordinate on this.
>
>     Karl, Sebastian, what do you mean?
>
> I think TL should follow teTeX.  There are a lot of trees now, for
> various reasons.
>
> As far as TEXMFDIST goes -- Frank, its purpose, as Fabrice envisioned
> it, is not to be "replaced completely with a new tarball".  It's to
> provide files which are distribution-independent.  That (in principle)
> MiKTeX and XEmTeX and teTeX and ... could share.

For me, the main goal for texmf and texmf-dist separation is to make 
separate updates of the TeX programs (say a new pdftex appears) and the 
basic tree wiith packages, styles, fonts, etc. If the programs change, 
some parts of texmf change as well (e.g. .pool files), while the texmf 
tree is more or less independent of the version of programs you are 
using.

G



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