[tldistro] some instructions for packagers are probably missing

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Mojca,

On Sa, 10 Sep 2011, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> I think that some kind of README (text or pdf) is missing, explaining
> what exactly has to be taken care of when tlmgr is not used and what
> exactly needs testing. But I'm not exactly sure what that would be.

Well, that is not so easy. OTOH, it is also not so hard.
It is simply that the formats, the language def and the map files
have to be managed, that is in principle what tlmgr generate is doing.

> In ideal world the packager would only need "./configure --long --list
> --of --options" & "make" & "make install".

THat is not the question or problem, that is already working with
a bit of added coding. What is the complicated part is how to deal
with pre-packaged thigns, that are installed later and not all of
them at the same time.

Here all distributions have probably different approaches, esp since
there are different levels of requirements. In Debian we have *very* high
requirements, so if an admin has changed a config file these changes
have to be preserved if possible, and even if the package is removed
but not completely purged! THat is the reason why upgrades between
Debian releases are normally quite simply (that was the reason I changed
from a different big distribution to Debian long ago - this dist simply
ignored my changes in /etc/ and rewrote config files etc etc, something
I hate).

So the handling of these things can not be done for all at once, but
what is necessary is clear, handling of updmap.cfg, fmtutil.cnf,
language.dat, language.def and now some lua stuff.

I thing the *BIGGEST* problem is actually with you and ConTeXt and the 
lua stuff. THe fmtutil/updmap/hyphen stuff hasn't changed in the last
NN years, while on the ConTeXt side we have quite quick changes in
the config files, which makes it very hard to follow, especially
since there is no documentation from that side.

So to throw back the ball to you, or who ever, there is improvement
necessary, everything else is well documented and known.

Best wishes

Norbert
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Norbert Preining            preining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
JAIST, Japan                                 TeX Live & Debian Developer
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