[oi-dev] Tasks to focus on

[Volker A. Brandt]

Hi Aurélien!


> On Sun, Jan 24, 2021 at 5:35 PM Volker A. Brandt <vab at bb-c.de> wrote:
>     > On Sat, Jan 23, 2021 at 02:35:01PM -0700, Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
>     > >
>     > > I'm part of the TeX Live team that every (northern) winter produces a
>     > > new release; many O/S distributions then take up that release and
>     > > repackage it according to their preferences.
>     >
>     > That's probably what Openindiana would do too.  All software products
>     > installed on OI systems are installed from IPS packages, the same as
>     > on Solaris.  The packages are built from source.  Binaries are of no
>     > use for OI packages.
>     >
>     > First, though, there has to be demand for the software product.  I,
>     > myself, have no interest in Tex.  In fact, I don't even know what Tex
>     > is, except that it's used by mathematicians.  I'm not one of those.  I
>     > have some doubts about the demand.
>
>     I use it every day. :-)  TBH it's a self-built version on Solaris 11.3.
>
>     > [...]
>     > > However, at Utah, I make a point of doing test builds for many more,
>     > > and I can report that this year, with newer compilers on Oracle
>     > > Solaris 11.4, there were few problems in building a complete TeX Live
>     > > 2021 set of binaries.
>     > >
>     > > The current status report is here:
>     > >
>     > >     http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/texlive-utah/
>     >
>     > I've read this quickly, and already see obstacles.  OI packages have
>     > some restrictions that may not arise when the software is installed
>     > directly.
>
>     TeX (in the form of TeXlive 2020) is available as an IPS package from
>     the OmniOS "extra" repository, so packaging is no problem.
>
>
> Packaging TeXLive needs some scripting to split tex packages by groups,
> otherwise you get a >= 1.5GB blob to install at once.
> I think the Debian Sciences team had developed such scripts to maintain their
> packages.

True!  I do have my own script for Solaris, that does exactly the same
thing.  This is the result:

  pkg://bb-c/bbc/application/texlive@1.0.0,5.11:20150514T171548Z
  pkg://bb-c/bbc/application/texlive/binaries@1.0.0,5.11:20150514T222435Z
  pkg://bb-c/bbc/application/texlive/doc-latex-1@1.0.0,5.11:20150514T170151Z
  pkg://bb-c/bbc/application/texlive/doc-latex-2@1.0.0,5.11:20150514T170242Z
  pkg://bb-c/bbc/application/texlive/doc-local@1.0.0,5.11:20150528T071726Z
  pkg://bb-c/bbc/application/texlive/doc-other@1.0.0,5.11:20150514T170337Z
  pkg://bb-c/bbc/application/texlive/formats@1.0.0,5.11:20150514T170427Z
  pkg://bb-c/bbc/application/texlive/local@1.0.0,5.11:20150514T210914Z
  pkg://bb-c/bbc/application/texlive/other@1.0.1,5.11:20150514T213612Z

Seems I will need to update some time... :-)

> I did package TexLive ~2015 in oi-userland but this was a lot of work to
> maintain ctan packages individually so it was never integrated.
> I ended up using the prepackaged TexLive suite for this reason.

Exactly.  That is the only sensible thing to do.  I compiled my own
binaries because I have "fat" packages with both SPARC and x86 contents.

> Being an applied mathematician/numerician and therefore avid user of TeX I
> would be very happy if TexLive were to be added to oi-userland.

It's not difficult at all, just some tedious work.


Regards -- Volker
-- 
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Volker A. Brandt        Consulting and Support for Solaris-based Systems
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