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

[Oliver Bandel]

On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 02:33:42AM +0200, Staszek Wawrykiewicz wrote:
> Ehhh!... I think that we missed the main point on that huge disscussion:
> 1. installing from the DVD needs any list for what has to be copied

Yes.
Is there no such list? ;-)

I have not seen such list files on the DV, but I did
not looked in detail on it.

But it is possible to (de)select parts of the distribution
(e.g. many languages that you never will use, so you not need
to install them).

So, for each selection of the installation it seems to me,
that certain files must be installed.

On my first view of the install-tl.sh I thought: "oh, well,
it seems, the files which should be installed will be looked
for, during the installation process".

Maybe I've overlooked something in the script, but it seems to me
a lot of time is wasted in looking for files.

If not, please is there a brief description of the installation-process?
(Don't want to reengineer the Shell-code; there seems to be dead code...?!)


> 2. regardless of used method (perl, sh, ...) of the installer, it uses
>    anyway the standard "cp" ("copy" on windows) upon the given list. 
>    
> That's the main problem and that's why installing from the DVD ~40000 
> files takes so long time. So, please, concentrate how to overcome it.
> Any idea is welcome.

cp normally use a certain block size (8k(?)).

When you copy large files, using dd with bs=<large_block_size>
can be much, much faster.

But I don't know if this brings any speed-up, when you have many
small files. It could help, when you copy a large *.tar/*.tgz file.

Ciao,
   Oliver