[tlbuild] Problems with building texlive/context from its sources

[Ken Moffat]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2023 at 02:57:49PM +0000, Jakob Jakobson wrote:
> Dear developers,
> 
> I am/become one of the texlive mantainers for its flatpak package, a more or
> less recent and new approach for establishing a linux packaging format. The
> flatpak packages are usually build from source and so is the texlive
> package. You can find it under https://github.com/flathub/org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.texlive/tree/branch/22.08
> . The file https://github.com/flathub/org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.texlive/blob/branch/22.08/org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.texlive.yml
> is the build manifest which lists the files and commands/additional steps
> needed for the build process.
> The current build of texlive works well with pdflatex/lualatex/xelatex but
> with the context part I have some problems. Therefore, I would appreciate
> any help with the following questions:
> 1) Is context included in the texlive-20230313* tarballs or do I have to
> download it in an extra step?
> 2) If context is included in the texlive-20230313* tarballs, do I have to
> additionally download luametatex or is luametatex a part of context?
> 3) If luametatex is via context in the texlive-20230313* tarballs, how do I
> build it?
> 
> Sorry for those (perhaps obvious) questions but I have to admit that I find
> the texlive building process quite confusing. Also, I could not find any
> installation guide that covers the scenario of building context within a
> texlive 2023 installation from its sources on linux.
> 
> Thanks in advance and regards
> Jakob

Hi Jakob,

the discussions ended up on the tex-live list rather than tlbuild,
archives at https://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/ - check March and
April.

If you want luametatex there are various comments on it, and where
to get it, also comments about how/where to install it.  I've
noticed that fedora's current specfile works around luametatex by
using some symlinks and shell scripts (i.e. it supports MKIV), and
for BLFS in the end I've taken a similar approach (no desire to add
yet another package to our book).

And yes, the build from source can be confusing - some distros
appear to just package the binaries.

HTH.

ĸen
-- 
By the way, contrary to popular opinion pyramids don't sharpen razor
blades, they just take them back to when they weren't blunt.  It's
probably because of quantum.   --  Pyramids