Steps to make scripts/markdown/markdown-cli.lua executable and symlinked to system directories as markdown-cli

[Vít Starý Novotný]

Dear Karl,

thank you for your response. In markdown v3.9.1 from December 17, I added
section "Notes for Distributors" to file "README.md" in the doc/ subtree of
the Markdown package for TeX, which requests that the file
`markdown-cli.lua` is made available as an executable.

> The basic question from me is, what is markdown-cli?

It's the command-line interface of the Markdown package for TeX, described
in Section 2.2 of the 2019 article titled "Markdown 2.7.0: Towards
lightweight markup in TeX" [1] from TUGboat 40:1.

 [1]: https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb40-1/tb124novotny-markdown.pdf

> Is it useful outside the TeX markdown package?

It is not.

> Are there (or could there be) other unrelated markdown "CLI"s?

While there are other command-line tools for converting markdown to various
other formats, none of them are named "markdown-cli". Most people would not
include "-cli" in the name of their executables, so the risk of collision
seems low. However, we may name the executable e.g. `markdown2tex` if you
think that would be more descriptive and less confusing to users,
especially those with TeX installed through their OS distribution.

Best,
Vit

On Wed, Dec 4, 2024 at 10:52 PM Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:

> Hi Vit,
>
>     If I understand correctly, there isn't an automated mechanism for
> this.
>
> Correct. Adding new user-level executables is sufficiently fraught with
> potential problems that I want to examine each new case individually.
>
>     process involves placing the script file in the scripts/ directory
>     on CTAN,
>
> The location on CTAN isn't important for this purpose, but should be
> chosen according to whatever makes the most sense, as usual. User-level
> scripts in TL can (and do) come from anywhere on CTAN.
>
> Also, the file does not have to be executable on CTAN. Either way is ok.
>
>     politely requesting the distribution maintainers to include
>     it, or writing a README file and hoping it catches someone's
>     attention.
>
> Yes. Or, if Christian and/or I fail to notice (not uncommon,
> unfortunately), write this list (for TL; I don't know about MiKTeX
> preferences) and mention it.
>
> I'm guessing you already saw it, but for the record,
> I write down what I could think of about scripts and TL at
> https://tug.org/texlive/pkgcontrib.html#exec.
>
> -
>
> The basic question from me is, what is markdown-cli? Is it useful
> outside the TeX markdown package? Are there (or could there be) other
> unrelated markdown "CLI"s? Because our script names have to be
> reasonably identifying not just for the TeX world, but for the entire
> OS, since they're going to end up in the OS distributions in, typically,
> /usr/bin.  --thanks, karl.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/attachments/20250121/17631eae/attachment.htm>