[68483] trunk/dports/tex/LaTeXiT/Portfile

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jun 4, 2010, at 10:53, David Baumgold wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 11:46 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>> 
>> On Jun 4, 2010, at 10:31, singingwolfboy at macports.org wrote:
>> 
>>> Revision: 68483
>>>          http://trac.macports.org/changeset/68483
>>> Author:   singingwolfboy at macports.org
>>> Date:     2010-06-04 08:31:28 -0700 (Fri, 04 Jun 2010)
>>> Log Message:
>>> -----------
>>> updated LaTeXiT to v2.2.0, added dependency on pdftex, along with variant to specify external pdftex
>> 
>>> +variant mactex description "If your TeX distribution is MacTeX" {
>>> +     depends_run-delete    bin:pdftex:texlive
>>> +}
>> 
>> I thought the whole point of specifying the texlive dependency using the bin:-style was so that an external binary such as one from MacTeX could satisfy it. (I believe the user is assumed to have inserted the path to the MacTeX programs into the binpath in macports.conf if they want to use MacTeX.) So I don't think such a variant is necessary here. I've not seen such a variant in other ports that use TeX.
> 
> So that's why the bin:-style specification alone didn't work for me!
> When I was editing the port, I tested it on my own machine before
> committing it, and although I have MacTeX installed, MacPorts didn't
> find my pdftex. I noticed that it was in /usr/texbin, and I figured
> that wasn't the reason why -- I didn't know that I could add that path
> to a file, much less that I *should*! Where is this documented, and is
> there a good way to point it out to potential users of this port?

I was unable to locate any documentation, for example in the wiki, but I recall such discussions on the mailing lists before. A MacPorts wiki page about TeX would probably be a good thing for someone to write.


>> I'm not a fan of this variant description either; it doesn't have the imperative style we use in other variant descriptions. Think of it as a checkbox in a GUI: you wouldn't write a checkbox label starting with "If". I guess you just copied this from the auctex port but I don't like it there either. "Use MacTeX instead of TeX Live" would be how I would describe the variant, if indeed the variant is necessary.
> 
> Definitely a good point. I did just copy the description from the
> auxtex port, but I like your description better. I'll update the port,
> and we can continue discussing whether the variant is necessary at
> all. (I feel like it is, unless there is some other way to indicate to
> the user that the port can still be installed with MacTeX instead of
> TeX Live.)

In any case, it is a general problem that affects tons of ports, not just LaTeXiT. And it's probably the wrong idea to try to modify each of those ports to deal with the situation; we should deal with it at the source. Which is either in the texlive port, or one of its dependencies (texlive_base? texlive_texmf-minimal? texlive_texmf-full?). Whichever port is picked could be modified to print a message before in pre-configure, referring users to the wiki page that hasn't been written yet. And the wiki page could explain to users how to use MacTeX instead.