[tex-live] package dependencies

Mojca Miklavec mojca.miklavec.lists at gmail.com
Thu May 10 02:17:44 CEST 2007


On 5/8/07, Karl Berry wrote:
> I wonder if miktex tries to implement package-level dependencies.  If
> you install acronym under miktex, does it install bigfoot (or suffix, if
> it got separated out)?

As Juergen pointed out: MikTeX installs the package first time when it
sees a file is missing, so there is no need to keep track of package
dependencies - it's much better that way, at least I understand it so.

So, when one runs "texexec", MikTeX will notice that "texexec.rb" is
missing and fetch context.cab only. During building of format for
ConTeXt, it will notice that Ukrainian patterns (strange &
unreasonable side-effect) and Latin Modern are missing when ConTeXt
asks for them, so it will install those two packages as well.

If one asks for "ec-iwona.tfm", it will simply install the
corresponding iwona.cab package for example. It works really
impressive and really smooth (some bugs here and there, but there are
so many users that they get resolved pretty quickly) ...

I don't know about the two specific packages, but it will install them
when you first request one of the files from a package. If package A
requires package B, then package B will be installed during processing
of files from A.

Mojca


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