[tldistro] tlmgr lose functions in packages built from source

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Robby,

On Mi, 18 Nov 2009, Robby Workman wrote:
> not really know *how* to test tlmgr nor what exactly it was supposed
> to do, so I included it in the package as a "just in case" thing.

That would have been easy to fix by reading its man page? Or one 
of the presentation slides contained in TL, or one of the articles
presenting TL and tlmgr, also available in TL.

Nobody expects you to know all the details of all prograsm shipped,
I myself have used only a small percentage of the scripts and programs
in TeX Live. But tlmgr is different, a is texconfig, fmtutil, updmap.
You should *know* very well what these scripts are doing before 
packaging! You should know very well what are the configuration files
for these programs, where they are etc etc.

Anything else simply will create a bad experience.

> via the package manager.  Basically, everything other than tlmgr passed 
> the "Works for me" test, and lots of our users
> were wanting TeXLive, so what better way to get some wider testing and 
> feedback on the package?

No that is fine, of course. 

> Sure, that makes sense.  That's one of the reasons that I (well, in
> general, Slackware as a whole) try to follow what the upstream
> distribution does - I tried to replicate the directory structure and
> contents of the official TeXLive iso.

Then, if the binaries are also in the respective places, you can
actually use tlmgr. Or you can patch tlmgr, I guess only the
initial
	$Master
setting has to be changed to a real path because now it uses SELFAUTOPARENT
(or SELFAUTOLOC) and if your binaries are somewhere else then it will
not work.

> This isn't intended as a flame, but "Debian (re)moved it" isn't nearly  
> enough reason for something to get (re)moved.

Of course not becasue it is Debian, I agree. But maybe because Debian
was the first distribution having TL packaged (2005!!) and maybe that 
thus we have the most experience in packaging TL. I can point to several
packaging problems in other distributions because some things wereen't
don properly. Please don't get me wrong, I do NOT evangelize for Debian
here, not the least. Only that we have long years of experience in
packaging that TL beast, so it might serve as a guideline on 
packaging.

> Had I done that, there wouldn't *be* a package yet.  Don't misunderstand
> me - in general, that's *definitely* the correct approach to take as a
> packager - but when the packager isn't intimately familiar with the  
> software, there comes a point where he/she has to put something out there
> for the users and get/hope for feedback and improvements on the things
> that weren't done optimally.

As I said above, no need to know each and every program. I would reduce
the list to the following things:
	fmtutil
	updmap
	texconfig (getting less and less importatn)
	tlmgr
for each of them you have to decide what you want to do. In Debian
we patched fmtutil and updmap. There are some reasons for that ni the
Debian policy (changes to configuration files have to survive removal
and upgrades, so updmap-sys --enable Map cannot work directly on the
updmap.cfg file. Similar approach we have taken in TL now with tlmgr
generate stuff, same with fmtutil). tlmgr we do not ship as it 
provides functionality that is already present in by default
(apt-cache search, apt-get update, ...) in most cases.

I (TeX Live hat on) am working on a patch to tlmgr to make it work in
user mode, that would mean that you can manage arbitrary trees with
it. If I finish that one and it is included, I (Debian hat on) will
include tlmgr in Debian packages and patch it to always use that
mode.

> Completely understandable.  Perhaps I missed some stuff, but there
> seemed to be a big hole in the documentation with respect to building
> packages for distributions, so I (with help from Grissiom mainly) had

Well, who should write it? I mean all distributions are different.
Again, you *might* look at the Debian way (see arguments above) since we
have written quite some documentation on that, how config files
are treated etc etc. (TeX-on-Debian, and Debian-TeX-Policy).

How should *we* (TL hat on) write documentation how to packagae something
for distributions? That is something the distributors have to think
about it. 

Well, maybe we write something like "Take care and special attention
to those programs and config files!" (as listed above). That might be
a good idea.

Best wishes

Norbert

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Dr. Norbert Preining                                        Associate Professor
JAIST Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology   preining at jaist.ac.jp
Vienna University of Technology                               preining at logic.at
Debian Developer (Debian TeX Task Force)                    preining at debian.org
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