Integrating vanilla TeX Live 2021 with Debian

ud.usenetcorrespondence at web.de ud.usenetcorrespondence at web.de
Sun Jul 25 23:52:01 CEST 2021


I am planning to integrate a full installation of Vanilla TeX Live 2021 with my
Debian platform.
 
On the website of the TeX Users Group I read the instructions for integrating
vanilla TeX Live with Debian - <https://www.tug.org/texlive/debian.html#vanilla>.

Item 2 of these instructions says:

| Ensure that the only Debian TeX Live packages installed are
| tex-common, texinfo, and perhaps lmodern

This instruction indicates that -- when installing vanilla TeX Live via
install-tl -- a subset of Debian-packages needs to be removed from the Debian
installation if present, namely those Debian-packages that make up the set of
Debian TeX Live packages but do not belong to the package-set {tex-common,
texinfo, lmodern}.

The crucial question with this instruction is:

Question 1: How can I find out with a Debian-distribution which
            Debian-packages make up the set of Debian TeX Live packages?

Item 4 of these instructions is about creating a dummy-package for "telling"
Debian's package-management about the packages provided due to installing
vanilla TeX Live.
There is a link to a file  debian-equivs-2021-ex.txt -- 
<https://www.tug.org/texlive/files/debian-equivs-2021-ex.txt>.

The purpose of this file is to provide the content of the control-file by
means of which the equivs-tool creates the package file/the
"dummy"-.deb-file which in turn can be installed via dpkg.

Despite the actual purpose of the file debian-equivs-2021-ex.txt, in that file
you find the list of packages provided by the vanilla TeX Live 2021
installation.

Question 2: Is it sufficient to check one's Debian installation for the packages
            mentioned in that list being installed and - if so - having them
            removed? (This seems not sufficient in case with Debian's own
            TeX-Live packaging packages being named differently. But I don't know
            if this is the case.)

Question 3: What am I supposed to do regarding dummy-packages in case I wish to
            have several releases of vanilla TeX Live installed in parallel, 
            e.g., 2020 and 2021? With each of them the corresponding 
            dummy-package linked at <https://www.tug.org/texlive/debian.html#vanilla>
            provides the same set of packages, only the Version differs.

The mentioned file  debian-equivs-2021-ex.txt  looks like this:

----------snip------------------------------------------------------------------
Section: misc
Priority: optional
Standards-Version: 4.1.4
Package: texlive-local
Version: 2021.99999999-1
Maintainer: you <you at yourdomain.example.org>
Provides: chktex, biblatex, biblatex-dw, cm-super, cm-super-minimal, context, 
 dvidvi, dvipng, feynmf, fragmaster, jadetex, lacheck, latex-beamer, 
 latex-cjk-all, latex-cjk-chinese, latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-bkai00mp, 
 latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-bsmi00lp, latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-gbsn00lp, 
 latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-gkai00mp, latex-cjk-common, latex-cjk-japanese, 
 latex-cjk-japanese-wadalab, latex-cjk-korean, latex-cjk-thai, latexdiff, 
 latexmk, latex-sanskrit, latex-xcolor, lcdf-typetools, lmodern, luatex, 
 musixtex, passivetex, pgf, preview-latex-style, prosper, ps2eps, psutils, 
 purifyeps, t1utils, tex4ht, tex4ht-common, tex-gyre, texlive, texlive-base, 
 texlive-bibtex-extra, texlive-binaries, texlive-common, texlive-extra-utils,
 texlive-fonts-extra, texlive-fonts-extra-doc, texlive-fonts-recommended,
 texlive-fonts-recommended-doc, texlive-font-utils, texlive-formats-extra,
 texlive-games, texlive-generic-extra, texlive-generic-recommended,
 texlive-humanities, texlive-humanities-doc, texlive-lang-african,
 texlive-lang-all, texlive-lang-arabic, texlive-lang-cjk, texlive-lang-cyrillic,
 texlive-lang-czechslovak, texlive-lang-english, texlive-lang-european,
 texlive-lang-japanese, texlive-lang-chinese, texlive-lang-korean,
 texlive-lang-french, texlive-lang-german, texlive-lang-greek, 
 texlive-lang-indic, texlive-lang-italian, texlive-lang-other, 
 texlive-lang-polish, texlive-lang-portuguese, texlive-lang-spanish,
 texlive-latex-base, texlive-latex-base-doc, texlive-latex-extra, 
 texlive-latex-extra-doc, texlive-latex-recommended, 
 texlive-latex-recommended-doc, texlive-luatex, texlive-math-extra, 
 texlive-metapost, texlive-metapost-doc, texlive-music,
 texlive-omega, texlive-pictures, texlive-pictures-doc, texlive-plain-extra,
 texlive-plain-generic,
 texlive-pstricks, texlive-pstricks-doc, texlive-publishers,
 texlive-publishers-doc, texlive-science, texlive-science-doc, texlive-xetex,
 thailatex, tipa, tipa-doc, xindy, xindy-rules, xmltex, asymptote, texinfo
Depends: freeglut3
Architecture: all
Description: My local installation of TeX Live 2021.
 A full "vanilla" TeX Live 2021
 https://www.tug.org/texlive/debian#vanilla
----------snap------------------------------------------------------------------

Question 4: In the Description-field you find the url:
            <http://tug.org/texlive/debian#vanilla>
            Shouldn't this be:
            <https://www.tug.org/texlive/debian.html#vanilla> ?
            (".html" behind "debian" is missing.)

Question 5: The field "Standards-Version: 4.1.4" indicates that the
            control file complies to the 
            Debian Policy Manual 4.1.4.<whatsoever>.

            On the web I could only find the more recent
            Debian Policy Manual version 4.5.1.0, released on 2020-11-17 --
            <https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/index.html>.

            Where can I find releases of the Debian Policy Manual prior to
            4.5.1.0, especially release 4.1.4 ?

Question 6: Section "5.6.12. Version" of Debian Policy Manual version 4.5.1.0, 
            <https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#version>
            indicates that in the version-field  "Version: 2021.99999999-1 " 
            the string "2021.99999999" denotes the upstream-version (and the 
            string "-1" denotes the debian-revision).

            The debian package-search,  <https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=texlive>
            reveals that with regular Debian-texlive-packages the
            upstream-version, which comes from the developers of texlive, seems
            to be of a specific of a specific pattern.
            E.g, with Debian-buster (stable) the upstream-version of the 
            package texlive is "2018.20190227" (and the debian-revision is "2").

            What is the pattern of these upstream-version-numbers?
            "2018" seems to denote a year. What year?  
            "20190227" seems to denote a date. What date?
            Does "2018" denote TeX Live 2018?
            Does "20190227" the date when the repository was synchronized/
            rsynced with the TeX-Live-repository on the CTAN-master server for
            creating the Debian-package?

Question 7: Why do you find the packages "texinfo" and "lmodern" in the
            "Provides"-field although the instructions advise to ensure that
            these packages are already installed?
            Shouldn't they (together with "tex-common" and "freeglut") be
            listed in the "Depends"-field instead?
   
In item 2 of the above-mentioned instructions you are advised to "ensure that
the only Debian TeX Live packages installed are tex-common, texinfo, and perhaps
lmodern".

Question 8: What is the phrase "perhaps" before "lmodern" intended to indicate?
            That one should keep Debian's lmodern-package only in case one
            does not integrate the lmodern-fonts coming with the TeX Live
            distribution system-wide?

Question 9: Ad ensuring "that the only Debian TeX Live packages installed are
            tex-common, texinfo, and perhaps lmodern":

            Shouldn't the dummy-package be installed **before** uninstalling
            any Debian-packages?

            Otherwise Debian packages might be uninstalled as well which do
            not belong to Debian TeX Live but do depend on it. 

            (Probably one could adapt the dummy-package's control file to
             remove any already existing Debian TeX Live installation via
             "Conflicts:"- and "Replaces:"-directives as described at
             <https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html#overwriting-files-and-replacing-packages-replaces>
             and then install the dummy-package before running install-tl...,
             this way combining the step of ensuring "that the only
             Debian TeX Live packages installed are tex-common, texinfo, and
             perhaps lmodern" with the step of installing the dummy-package.)

Thank you for taking the time to read my questions.

Sincerely

Ulrich



More information about the tex-live mailing list.