[tex-live] Using Jigdo as a downloader

[Steve Schnepp]

On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 08:34:12PM +0000, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> the short answer, for my part, is because this is the first time I heard 
> of it :-}

That's one of the best reason anyway ;-)

> TL is a _lot_ more complicated than downloading files from CTAN. A
> typical LaTeX macro package, for instance, is stored on CTAN as one
> .dtx file and one .sty file.  These have to be processed,

Do you mean that they're not identical between CTAN & TL ?

> and the resulting files placed in the right places in a hierarchy.
> Documentation files are run to PDF, font metrics are created etc. And
> that's just for a simple package... 

:-(

> So using jigdo to talk to CTAN would not work. However, it might work
> as a distribution mechanism from the copy of the TeX Live master tree
> on tug.org.



> To be honest, I don't really understand what jigdo is doing after a 
> quick read of the web page, and the dark green background makes it too 
> hard work for now :-} 

In *very* short : 
You give Jidgo an .iso file and a bunch of files (on a local fs, feedind
jigdo with something like "find -type f"). Since an ISO is somewhat an
aggregate of many files, it tries to find parts of the iso that are also
in the files. That way it only creates a .template with all the ISO
parts that are not contained in files, and a .jigdo where it stores the
path and the offset of the parts that are in files...

So, in *very* short, the more you have unchanged files available via
http or ftp, the smaller the .template.

[ Hope that you can understand what I explained... it's maybe not on a
dark green background, but it's somewhat more mixed-up ;-)) ]

> But if you'd like to demonstrate how it might work, and have space on
> your server to make an experiment (the master is currently 1.19
> Gbytes), 

Sure !. Actually, I don't need to have the whole 1.19 TL *online*, just
the .jigdo and the .template :-). They'll point to the master TL
server...

> I could show you how to grab a copy of TL and keep in sync
> with it.

I thought about grabbing it stupidly via mirror(1). Keeping in sync
isn't one of my highest priority... Yet ?...

And thx for your fast reply ;-)

	Steve

-- 
GPG public key available from http://snide.free.fr/gpg/snide.free.fr.asc
   Or by email to "snide at free.fr" with "send key pub" as subject
   Fingerprint: 19D7 12ED 5A37 4F29 8FDA  19B0 6DFD 3A54 A753 EA6F