[tlbuild] Configure issues with texlive-20091107

[Angel Tsankov]

Norbert Preining wrote:
> On Fr, 15 Jan 2010, Angel Tsankov wrote:
>> 1. over the Internet using the net installer;
>> 2. from the iso image;
> 
> Right.
> 
>> 3. build the binaries from source using one or more of the tarballs.
> 
> That is only half the work.
> 
>> -- the Build script is located in the 'source' tarball.  Is it necessary  
>> to unpack any of the other 3 tarballs before running this script?
> 
> No.
> 
>> -- having built and installed the binaries (by running Build or  
>> configure && make world), do I have to download the texmf and texmf-dist  
>> directories from the SVN repo, or may I use the 'texmf' tarball instead?
> 
> You can use the texmf tarballs. If all the files are in the right
> place you will be able to use the tex programs.
> 
> But tlmgr will not work.
> 
>> -- what is the purpose of the 'extra' and 'bin' tarballs?  I guess  
> 
> bin: pre-built binaries, if you have a supported arch it is probably
> better to try these, as it is quite tricky to build all binaries,
> especially xindy.
> 
> extra: forget it, it contains some documentation, LICENSE, release
> numbers, portable scripts, index.html for the main dir. You can look
> into it, not soo much. (that is in 2008).
> extra in 2009: contains the tlpkg/TeXLive perl modules needed if
> you want to run tlmgr.
> 
> But be warned, if you do NOT make a proper installation with install-tl
> the tlpkg/texlvie.tlpdb will not be set up, and usage of tlmgr(.pl)
> will be broken. That is fine if you update the package in a different
> way. In Debian we not even ship tlmgr.
> 
> 
>> copying the pre-built binaries (for my architecture) that are found in  
>> the 'bin' tarball is roughly equivalent to building and installing the  
>> 'source' package.  Am I right?
> 
> roughly, but unfortunately I am not sure if it is 100%. Some links
> to scripts have been (at some poiint, we are getting rid of that)
> been installed by hand into bin/*/

Building from source does not seem be a simple task.  I guess for the 
time being I'll just install TL from the iso image somehow.  Many thanks 
to everyone for your patience.


Angel Tsankov