[tex-live] debian packages ready

[David Kastrup]

Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> writes:

> ------------- 8< --------------------------
> README forTeXlive for Debian
> =============================
>
> * Conflicts: 
>   - texlive-psutils <-> lcdf-typetools 
>     this is ok, since we provide all the programs
>   - texlive-psutils <-> psutils
>     Here there is a problem, as kdeprint depends on psutils.
>     So you either install psutils and kdeprint, or texlive-psutils and
>     forget about kde(print). It is your option, and we are working on this.
>   - texlive-fontsrecommended <-> lmodern
>     For the TeX side there is no problem/lost. But the lmodern package
>     also provides the fonts for the X-Window-Systems. Decide what you want.
>   - texlive-latexextra <-> preview-latex-style
>     Another problem. texlive contains the same files of preview-latex-style,
>     but preview-latex (containing emacs stuff) depends on preview-latex-style.

The AUCTeX team is (still) preparing AUCTeX 11.80.  It will contain
preview-latex as an integrated part of AUCTeX instead of a separate
component.

It also has an optional compile time configuration that places the
required style files locally into the Emacs tree and manipulates
TEXINPUTS to access them.  From the installation instructions, the
section for package providers:

       If your package is intended as an XEmacs package or to
    accompany a precompiled version of Emacs, you might not know which
    TeX system will be available when preview-latex gets used.  In
    this case you should build using the `--without-texmf-dir' option
    described previously.  This can also be convenient for systems
    that are intended to support more than a single TeX distribution.
    Since more often than not TeX packages for operating system
    distributions are either much more outdated or much less complete
    than separately provided systems like TeX Live, this method may be
    generally preferable when providing packages.

       The following package structure would be adequate for a typical
    fully supported Unix-like installation:

    `preview-tetex'
         Style files and documentation for `preview.sty', placed into
         a TeX tree where it is accessible from the teTeX executables
         usually delivered with a system.  If there are other commonly
         used TeX system packages, it might be appropriate to provide
         separate packages for those.

    `auctex-emacs-tetex'
         This package will require the installation of `preview-tetex'
         and will record in `TeX-macro-global' know where to find the
         TeX tree.  It is also a good idea to run
              emacs -batch -f TeX-auto-generate-global
         when either AUCTeX or teTeX get installed or upgraded.

    `auctex-emacs-notex'
         This package will be compiled with `--without-texmf-dir' and
         will consequently contain the `preview' style files in its
         private directory.  It will probably not be possible to
         initialize `TeX-macro-global' to a useful value, so running
         `TeX-auto-generate-global' does not appear useful.  This
         package would neither conflict with nor provide
         `preview-tetex'.

    `auctex-xemacs-tetex'
    `auctex-xemacs-notex'
         Those are the obvious XEmacs equivalents.  For XEmacs, there
         is the additional problem that the XEmacs sumo package tree
         already possibly provides its own version of AUCTeX, and the
         user might even have used the XEmacs package manager to
         updating this package, or even installing a private AUCTeX
         version.  So you should make sure that such a package will
         not conflict with existing XEmacs packages and will be at an
         appropriate place in the load order (after site-wide and
         user-specific locations, but before a distribution-specific
         sumo package tree).  Using the `--without-packagedir' option
         might be one idea to avoid conflicts.  Another might be to
         refrain from providing an XEmacs package and just rely on the
         user or system administrator to instead use the XEmacs
         package system.


So with the next release of AUCTeX, there will be several ways of
tackling the problem.  One will be to use auctex-{,x}emacs-notex, another
would be if a separate package preview-texlive was created that would
satisfy the dependencies of auctex-{,x}emacs-tetex.  Maybe it would
make sense to factor out auctex-{,x}emacs-base from the above package
scheme and just make additional packages providing the rest.

Of course, this is just the advice from upstream.  Whether or not
Debian will follow it is a different question: after all, the
previous preview-latex scheme was quite different.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum