[tex-live] Re: Debian-TeXlive Proposal II

[Gerben Wierda]

On Jan 29, 2005, at 18:57, Karl Berry wrote:

>     I only suggested that the _Debian_ packages of tex-live and of 
> teTeX
>     do it the same way, and I would drop the separation.
>
> I don't see the benefit of Debian rearranging the original source in
> this major way.  Do you just not like /usr/share/texmf-dist?
>
> (Personally I think /usr/TeX makes a lot more sense, would be less
> implementation work and better for users, but I know that's not going 
> to
> go anywhere.)
>
> One big hypothetical -- if there was another TeX distribution (e.g.,
> miktex) that was available on debian, it could reuse (and depend on)
> texmf-dist packages, but you wouldn't want to try to somehow use part 
> of
> texmf from different binaries.  Ok, it doesn't exist today, but ...

This does exist to day on Mac OS X. OzTeX comes with its own texmf 
tree, but can be configured to use my redistribution as well

> Oh, I forgot, you can't support that anyway, since there can be only 
> one
> /usr/bin/tex.  Well, never mind I guess.

There could be multiple who get different texmf.cnf files with 
different TEXXXXX settings. They coul dshare (part of a tree). Not that 
such a convoluted setup  makes a lot of sense except for developers.

G

>
>     After all, it's just a question of removing one entry from
>     TEXMF = ..., and of creating the package in a particular way.
>
> "Just"?  You're moving hundreds of megabytes to a different location 
> ...
>