[tldistro] Experimental mapping of texlive packages to rpm packages

[pcpa at mandriva.com.br]

> Hi Paolo,

[for some reason I lost this email, so, using a cut&paste from tldistro archives]

> On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 11:26:20AM -0200, pcpa at mandriva.com.br wrote:
>>   Hi,
>>
>>   This is a bit Mandriva specific, but I was suggested to post
>> it here also, as I did some work on a mapping of texlive
>> packages as of texlive 2011 to rpm packages, instead of the
>> current approach of some monolithic packages, and some extra
>> magic to update the installation and upgrade from previous
>> and/or alternative packages (the mandriva specific stuff).
>>
>
> There exist an alternative upstream metadata -> rpm packages mapping
> in Fedora as well. It is a separate repository for now basically
> because of legal reasons. I've been maintaining the repo and

  Do you have more information about legal issues? I just did set
the License tag to http://www.tug.org/texlive/LICENSE.TL, this is
not a valid license tag but currently mandriva build system allows
it. For the new (possible) rework I am adding the license from the
texlive metadata.

> enhancing the rpm generation mechanism about for three years now.

  I started only recently doing some work on texlive. I did prefer
to make monolithic packages because I was initially not much
interested on needing to baby sit it too frequently, and was
hopping for someone else to take care of it, or make it easy for
somebody else to maintain it :-) But it is a package that deserves
the extra work.

> If interested:
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/TeXLive
> http://jnovy.fedorapeople.org/texlive/

  Thanks for the information!

  For my next experimental/prototype work, before making it "official"
Mandriva packages, I am planning to follow this line:

o Use http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/texlive/tlnet/archive
  (or equivalent mirror) as source for all noarch packages.
o Keep generating the arch specific binaries from the texlive
  tarball, following pattern of texlive arch specific packages.
  Add patches from texlive stable branch when required.
o Every noarch that has files package has its own spec.
o Meta packages, e.g. texlive-collection-* and texlive-scheme-*
  can all be in a single spec file.

  By splitting packages it should be easier to make intermediate
updates, or add new packages. For example, this weekend someone
requested to package mf2pt1, to be able to build mscore.

  Major problem with splitting is how to properly keep the
installation consistent during install/upgrade. It should not
be common to install all packages frequently, but this may
happen frequently for example when generating build system
chroots, unless texlive is added in a base chroot, where other
build requires are installed on top of it.

> Jindrich
>
> --
> Jindrich Novy <jnovy at redhat.com>   http://people.redhat.com/jnovy/
> Kdo víno má a nepije, kdo hrozny má a nejí je, kdo ženu má a nelíbá,
> kdo zábavě se vyhýbá, na toho vemte bič a hůl, to není
člověk, to je vůl.
> --- Jan Werich

Paulo