[tex-live] TL '11 pretest, binaries packages

[George N. White III]

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 11:58 AM, Siep Kroonenberg <siepo at cybercomm.nl> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 04:47:28PM +0200, Peter Dyballa wrote:
>> Hello!
>>
>> TL '11 contains a lot of packages <name>.<ARCH>. Each of these
>> packages <name> exists in a dozen or more variants because so many
>> architectures are supported. Although many of these packages do not
>> contain binaries but scripts, for example in Perl or Python or Ruby
>> or Lua or Java or TclTk/wish, architecture and platform independent,
>> some are just symbolic links. Why do these <ARCH> packages exist?
>
> For command-line use you want these scripts on the searchpath. These
> symlinks are a way to accomplish that, assuming that the binary
> directory for the platform is on the searchpath.

One could imagine having a directory bin/most-archs for scripts, but
it needs some
care when some platforms need special treatment.   Using .<arch>
packages means one can use generic scripts via symlinks when possible,
but can always provide a platform-specific version when the generic
scripts fail.  If, however, you are careful to use
PATH=../bin/<arch>:/bin/most-archs
on most platforms and put single-platform scripts/wrappers in bin/<arch>.

> Or did you mean something else?

And what is the problem that would be solved if the additional .<arch>
packages were eliminated?   I can see how they could be a nuisance
packaging TL for a linux distro where you want to keep as much as
possible in arch-independent packages.

> --
> Siep Kroonenberg
>



-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia