[tldistro] TexLive on MSYS2

[Norbert Preining]

Hi,

> 1. It makes symlinks for engine and symlinks in Windows means copying the
> executable. Is that fine?

Hmm, that of course is possbile, but a waste of space. In TeX Live we
have a wrapper that is very small and does the same.

I don't know the details, this is something Akira Kakuto is doing in
Win32.

> 2. It install `texlive-core_${_rev}.pkgs`,`texlive-core.maps` and
> `texlive-core.fmts` to `/var/lib/texmf/arch/installedpkgs`. What is so

First of all, those file by itself will not do anything. They have to be
used to generate
	fmtutil.cnf	(<- texlive-core.fmts)
	updmap.cfg	(<- texlive-core.maps)
I guess other packages in Arch bring their own $pkg.maps $pkg.fmts and
all of them need to be merged into a fmtutil.cnf/updmap.cfg

The generated files (fmtutil.cnf, updmap.cfg, and in fact also
language.dat and language.dat.lua and language.tex) need to be put into
the *right* place, that is where the engines can find them.


I don't know about Arch, but in Debian what I do is:
* every package ships the formats and font maps and hyphen patterns it
  it contains in
	/var/lib/tex-common/texlive/fmtutil-cnf  fontmap-cfg  hyphen-cnf
* The post installation routine merges all the respective files into
  fmtutil.cnf in /var/lib/texmf/fmtutil.cnf-TEXLIVEDIST
* /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/web2c/fmtutil.cnf is a link to the
  previous file
* Other packages might ship formats/maps in /usr/share/texmf/...
  and put their stuff into
	/varlib/tex-common/texmf/fmtutil-cnf  fontmap-cfg  hyphen-cnf
  and those files are merged into
  /var/lib/texmf/fmtutil.cnf-DEBIAN
* /usr/share/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf is a link to this file
* all of the same with updmap.cfg and language...

The reason for this two layer is that there are TeX Live packages, but
there are also TeX packages outside of TeX Live of packaged
independently from the TeX Live packages. The TeX Live packages go into
/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/, the rest goes into /usr/share/texmf/

You might ask why two different fmtutil.cnf/updmap.cfg files? Actually,
fmtutil and updmap (the programs) since quite some years now read *all*
the fmtutil.cnf etc files that they find. That way it is much easier to
localize the data (fonts, formats,) and their definition into the same
tree.

Puuuhhh, that was too long now ... hope you can digest it.

> special about `/var/lib/texmf/arch`? Can I change `/var/lib/texmf/arch` to

Nothing, you can use whatever. TeX will never use the files there as is.
You need to generate the prober configuration files in the postinst
routine, arch surely is doing this.

> Other than these now I rather familiar with configuration now. I will try

;-) Are you sure?

Best

Norbert

--
PREINING Norbert                              https://www.preining.info
Fujitsu                 + IFMGA Guide + TU Wien + TeX Live + Debian Dev
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