[tex-live] trouble starting context on latest tl2008 developer snapshot

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Taco,

On Mo, 07 Jul 2008, Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> The $bindir-s needs these three commands.
> Their contents can be very simple (in shell format):

Ok, added to the repo. Does work.

> texmfcnf.lua:
>   local conf = {}
>   conf.TEXMFCACHE = <the-var-tex-folder-install-decided-on>
>   return conf

Tried that, worked very nicely.

> Step 2.  luatools --generate
> Step 3.  context --make --compile cont-en

That is at installation. 

But there are MANY MANY MANY different problems here with updating:

- do we call luatools --generate when updating the context packages
- do we call luatools --generate if *any* package is updated 
  (similar to mktexlsr)
- do we call context --make ... at update time?

Can you answer this? Especially the second question is interesting!


On Mo, 07 Jul 2008, Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> I do realise that in many installations this won't work properly.
> Multi-user systems would actually want context to support something
> like "~/.texlive/2008/texmf-var" or a combination of SYS,USER settings
> to work properly because otherwise there will be permission conflicts
> (unless the umasks are set up just right) as well as privacy concerns
> (for any downloaded http files).

That is what I was talking about since *months* on the context list!
That is exactely the problem. I have tried that for getting it on
Debian, but that is useful for TeX Live integration, too.
Yes, if you want to have stuff tested you should think about these
things up front.

I explained:
- we need split caches (one for each tree) (is this still experimental?)
- we need ways for users to update only "their" cache
- we need ways for sysadmins to update only the system caches.

> But at this moment, context mkiv is still a very experimental system,
> and there is not enough time to remedy the TEXMFCACHE subsystem before
> texlive2008, so I will stick with the /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-var
> proposal for this year. I expect context mkiv to be much more mature
> next year.

It would be good to lay the ground work NOW! TL2008 release will take
time. And we can update the package during the year. But we should think
about WHAT we want and how it should and *WILL* work now.

Anyway, thanks for you very valuable remarks. I have already added the
specific code to the TLPostAction module, but disabled. We need to
settle for WHAT we want with the cache etc.

Best wishes

Norbert

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Dr. Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at>        Vienna University of Technology
Debian Developer <preining at debian.org>                         Debian TeX Group
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