[tex-live] Re: Debian packages of stuff also in TeX live

Frank Küster frank at debian.org
Fri Jul 22 09:44:14 CEST 2005


Staszek Wawrykiewicz <staw at gust.org.pl> wrote:

> On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, Norbert Preining wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> But as I said, the lmodern-debian package has several advantages, as it
>> also installs stuff for X, so it would be preferable to use the lmodern
>> stuff from the direct debian packages. Also because it will probably be
>> more often updated as once a year.
>
> I think that TeX Live repository is in real the first place where
> packages are updated. So the most fresh lmodern etc. (ready to 
> install and run) will be found on TL's p4 anyway.

But not on TL's last *released*CDs*, unless you coordinate releases
(including bug fix releases) with TeXlive.  And I assume that texlive
Debian packages will be based mainly on the released version of
texlive.  

My experience with the teTeX packages in Debian is that the combination
of a TeX distribution with a rather long (and, in case of teTeX,
unpredictable) release cycle and a Linux distribution with a really long
and unpredictable release cycle is problematic.  For example sarge ended
up with tetex-2.0.2 (even without lmodern), whereas lmodern is quite
recent (and it's a deliberate decision of the maintainer to be not
completely up-to-date).

For texlive, these problems will probably be less severe, but still
there.  Therefore packages that are under heavy development (an other
example is beamer) will almost for sure be more recent if you take the
individually packaged versions.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer



More information about the tex-live mailing list