[tex-live] TeXlive for Debian - Comments from DD and Mentor(s)

[Frank Küster]

Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> wrote:

>> - a manpage for texinfo and pdftexinfo is missing
>
> Are the in the original distribution? 

I don't know.

> If not, do you have them in tetex?

I thought they would be in the texinfo package, and

> If yes, can I copy them?

of course, since it's free software.  But the manpage is missing also in
the texinfo package.  Well, it's not so severe, since there is
texinfo(5) and the info, pdf, and html files.

>> - is usr/share/texmf/fmtutil/format.texinfo.cnf at its place on purpose?
>>   It seems to be a copy of /etc/texmf/fmt.d/50texlive-texinfo.cnf
>
> Yup, every tpm can contain a Execute-directive to create a format,
> together with a name string, in this case texinfo. The deb-source
> creation program and/or the deb build program (both tpm2pl) use this to
> collect *all* format snippets of one collection (texlive-...) for this
> package. In this case there is only one, but there could be more.

But doesn't this mean that the file is only useful up to the point where
the deb file has been created, with the 50texlive-texinfo.cnf file in
it, and is useless in the installed texmf tree?  Then why not remove it? 

>> - do the tpm files in /usr/share/texmf/tpm serve any purpose?
>
> Yes. They describe the packages. In fact they are used to install the
> resepctive files from the perforce depot into the debian-source-packjage
> and from the debian source package into the binary tree. I could leave
> them out of the binary packages, but they may serve some good use,
> especially as they describe which CTAN packages are part of a
> collection.

It would be nice to collect the information from these files and put
them into the long description field in the debian/control file.  But
after this has been done, I'd say they are superfluous (on an installed
system) and shouldn't be in the binary package.

>> - the info file in /usr/share/doc/texlive-texinfo/info should be put at
>>   its proper place and registered to the info system;  see
>>   dh_installinfo(1). 
>
> Hmmm, yup. This seems to be some work in the script, but probably not
> too much. I don't want to do anything by hand, you know! Up to now all
> the source-packages and binary-packages are generated automatically from
> the tpm2deb.pl script, which has as few exceptions as possible.

You can create debian/<package>.info automatically (just look for info
files in the respective trees).

>> - I wouldn't put the pdf and html file put into a subdirectory, but
>>   directly into /usr/share/doc/texlive-texinfo/info.  And don't you have
>>   texdoc or a similar program?  Then you should either put those files
>>   into $TEXMF/doc (in teTeX this is a symlink to /usr/share/doc/texmf,
>>   and we should keep this consistent), or create symlinks so that they
>>   can be found.
>
> Ahhh, good hint. Up to now I thought that I install all the DocFiles (a
> category in the tpm files) into /usr/share/doc/debname/... instead of
> /usr/share/texmf/doc/... were the originally are present. 
>
> This means I can leave the files in the place they are normally, and
> also create this link. Thanks!

According to policy, the documentation should be in/below
/usr/share/doc/debname/.  Therefore you should in fact make a symlink
from there to /usr/share/doc/texmf/<someplace>.

>> - why do you conflict with tetex-src - you don't install any 
>>   files in /usr/share/texmf/source, do you?
>
> Not in texlive-texinfo, but in other collections. We decided here on the
> list that the packages come with their source.

I would suggest to put it on your TODO list, less important items, to
sort this out and drop conflicts that aren't needed.

>> Overall, this looks as if it shouldn't be too hard to make this a
>> replacement for the traditional Debian texinfo package.  I don't know
>
> Again, as above. Some one should review at least:
> 	texlive-basic
> 	texlive-basicbin
> 	texlive-documentation-base
> which texlive-texinfo depends on (directly or indirectly).
[...]
> Would it be possible to install the (texlive-)texinfo package together
> with tetex? Would this work out?

It does work.  I just tried in a clean sid pbuilder chroot with
teTeX-3.0 from experimental installed:

dpkg -r --force-depends texinfo # because of a bug in texinfo,
                                # tetex-base still depends on
                                # texinfo instead of the other
                                # way round
dpkg --force-depends --force-conflicts -i \
   texlive-texinfo_2005.08.08-1_i386.deb

After that, I have succesfully created html, dvi, pdf, and info files
from dvips.texi.

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