[tex-live] [pretest] pdfcsplain is bad linked in x86_64-linux

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2014-05-08 at 07:41:03 +0900, Norbert Preining wrote:

 > Hi Reinhard, hi all,
 > 
 > > You are right, the symlinks are already in the .tar.xz packages.  It
 > > seems that we already lost some functionality from teTeX.  It would be
 > 
 > Huu, which functionality? Symlinks were not created in teTeX at 
 > format build time AFAIR.

Not if you run "fmtutil --all" but if you run "texconfig init".  As I
said, it's a pity that Thomas didn't add the functionality to fmtutil.

 > > files.  Please note that "texconfig init" creates symlinks for all
 > 
 > Do *NOT* advertise texconfig, please please please.
 > texconfig is dead. Nobody works on it, nobody adapts it to new things.
 > It might work in some border cases.

I'm not advertising texconfig.  In a previous mail I said:

 | However, texconfig is not an option because it's not running on
 | Windows and doesn't create wrappers for Windows.

But it's a matter of fact that teTeX's texconfig and TeX Live's tlmgr
behave differently.  I can't describe the differences without
mentioning texconfig.   

 > > platforms.  Maybe Norbert could add this functionality to tlmgr as a
 > > higher level interface to fmtutil.  Of course, it's too late for
 > > TL-2014 but maybe worth to be considered for the future.
 > 
 > I don't understand what is your target: Do oyou mean when
 > 	fmtutil ... something ...
 > is run, then links should be generated?

Yes.  In an ideal world fmtutil would create the symlinks but since
Thomas added the symlink stuff to texconfig and Fabrice ported fmtutil
to C, the only solution is to provide a wrapper which calls fmtutil
and creates the symlinks.

In short: Yes, it would be nice if fmtutil creates the symlinks.

 > But what about context which has several format dumps for different
 > languages, but no specific links? And what about the pdfcs* formats
 > with the same problem?

See below.

 > Rewriting fmtutil in perl is anyway high up in my list of things
 > to do for TeX Live ....

That would be great and offers a lot of new new opportunities.

Your question again:

 > But what about context which has several format dumps for different
 > languages, but no specific links? And what about the pdfcs* formats
 > with the same problem?

Sure, ConTeXt is invoked by scripts and format files are selected by
command-line options, hence no symlinks are needed.  And the
pdfcsplain formats only needs a symlink to pdftex.

As I said before, there is no need to change anything now.  But if you
intend to write fmtutil from scratch, I believe that a variable like
--nosymlink in fmtutil.cnf is quite useful.  At least if the new
fmtutil is supposed to maintain symlinks.  

If you re-write fmtutil in Perl, everything should be feasible. :)

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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