tetex/texlive dependencies

[Emmanuel Hainry]

Citando Ryan Schmidt :
> I hoped someone else would have something to say on the topic, since I
> myself don't use any of this TeX software. But they haven't so I will.

I have something to say.

> On Jan 9, 2008, at 18:03, John Owens wrote:
>
>> Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at ...> writes:
>>
>>> If more than one port installs a binary foo, and either one is good
>>> enough, this could be specified in a portfile by saying
>>>
>>> depends_lib path:${prefix}/bin/foo:bar
>>>
>>> where "bar" is the preferred port for providing foo if it is not
>>> already installed.
>>>
>>> The dependencies would have to be changed in all ports that currently
>>> depend directly on teTeX.
>>
>> OK cool. A few questions then:
>>
>> - At what point do we think about making texlive the 'default'
>>   TeX port rather than teTeX? (We should, eventually.)
>
> The first thing on the teTeX homepage is a "De-support notice"  
> explaining there will be no further versions. Sounds like now would be a 
> good time. You could contact the maintainers of the teTeX and texlive 
> ports to see if they agree. If they do, then you can contact the 
> maintainers of all the ports that currently declare a dependency on teTeX 
> and work with them to change this to texlive.

I am the maintainer of the texlive package (with openmaintainer) and
since the port exists, the only bugs reported were "does not compile in
leopard" (which is now solved) and "a lex file is not understood by
macports' lex on ppc" (which was reported and corrected by Simon). So It
seems to me texlive *2007* is stable enough. More, it is the same
package that is used in openBSD ports and pkgsrc so if there are bugs,
they should also occur for them.

On the other side, I don't have leopard, my mac is an old powerbook ppc
with little ram (and I use it less and less) hence I cannot test deeply
this package, neither correct bugs or feature requests*. So I would
encourage anybody interested in tex to join in maintainership.
Especially when texlive 2008 will appear.

>
>> - Seems like it would be more valuable to say "either this port
>>   or that port" rather than "depends on file", because there
>>   might be many many files that need to be supported.
>
> Perhaps. But MacPorts does not currently have any syntax for specifying 
> that, and we've gotten along without it so far. The alternative that we 
> currently have available is to specify that a port depends on a certain 
> file existing, and if it does not, then install one particular port that 
> provides that file. There might be another port (or ports) that could 
> also provide that file, but the user would have to know about this and 
> install that other port first. The dependent port that's specified should 
> be the one that "most" users would want.

At the moment, what dependent ports will check for is a texmf tree
(provided by texlive_texmf-minimal and some binaries (latex, pdflatex,
mktexlsr...). So the best dependency scheme would probably be
bin:latex:texlive.  So that people with tetex who do not care to have
the latest distribution can live with teTeX (which works well).

I am in favor of replacing dependencies from teTeX to texlive where it
is relevant.


*: for example build of xetex, xdvipdfmx... xetex is a part of texlive
and a distinct port in macports. But I disabled it in texlive as it
failed to build and there are reports that the xetex port does not build
with texlive...

Best regards,

Emmanuel
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-dev/attachments/20080114/c2d37343/attachment-0001.bin