[oi-dev] texlive package

[Volker A. Brandt]

Hi David!


Thanks for taking the time to think about TeX for OpenIndiana.

> The use of the TLMGR and TL package manager, may perhaps not be incompatible with IPS.
>
> I've added a pull request on github for a 'texlive' package:
>
> NAME (PUBLISHER)                                  VERSION                    IFO
> meta-packages/texlive (userland)                  1.0-2020.0.1.1             i--
>
> After installing that, you get the TeX live scripts to install TeX live:
>
> # pkg contents texlive
> PATH
> usr/share/install-tl-20210128/LICENSE.CTAN
> usr/share/install-tl-20210128/LICENSE.TL
> usr/share/install-tl-20210128/install-tl
> ...
>
> Then to run "perl install-tl" it installs the TeX live system,

I don't see any big win in packaging an installation tool.  There is no
difference to just downloading the installation tool directly, and just
running it on the system where TeX is to be installed.

The point is to have an IPS managed TeXlive environment that can be
installed and removed with a single command, respectively.  I do not
know anyone who updates their TeX installation in between the yearly
TeXlive releases.  If a new one comes out, just install it, then wait
another year.

I would prefer just to install everything as a preconfigured IPS package.
OmniOS already does that, except that it's a single huge package which
brings some disadvantages.

> And it may be possible to provide pre-packaged TeX distributions through IPS,
> (for the various schemes above) that can be maintained with TLMGR as well.

Absolutely.  As the IPS package includes everything, the TeXlive manager
will be there as well, and can be run at any time.  It will change some
files compared to their state in the IPS package database, which will
create some leftover objects in /var/pkg/lost+found after an update.

It's not hard to do at all.  The effort is finding someone to do the
actual work. :-)


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