[MacPorts] #16492: UPDATE: TexLive 2007 to newer version

[MacPorts]

#16492: UPDATE: TexLive 2007 to newer version
---------------------------------+------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  luis.beca@…          |       Owner:  milosh@…           
     Type:  update               |      Status:  new                
 Priority:  Normal               |   Milestone:                     
Component:  ports                |     Version:                     
 Keywords:                       |        Port:  texlive            
---------------------------------+------------------------------------------

Comment(by dports@…):

 Let me say a few words about what I'm working on with the texlive port so
 that people know what's going on -- looks like there's been a lot of
 interest in a more recent TeXLive lately.

 For background, texlive is a large and lumbering monstrosity. It includes
 a giant pile of source code (complete with all of its dependent
 libraries), an even more giant pile of TeX packages, and its own package
 manager. I believe texlive 2009 is divided into over 3000 packages, which
 are grouped into about 80 "collections", and further grouped into 10
 "schemes".

 The version currently in MacPorts is 2007, which IIRC predates TexLive's
 package management system. So there's a texlive_base port that installs
 the binaries, a texlive_texmf-full and a texlive_texmf-minimal that
 install some or all of the tex files, s texlive_texmf-docs port, and a
 texlive metaport.

 This organization doesn't really work for TL 2009, because there's no
 "minimal" texmf tree anymore and it's not really clear exactly what we'd
 want to put in a "minimal" install anyway. And I would really rather not
 support only a full install of texlive, because that's about a gig of
 distfiles and probably over 2GB installed. Instead, I'd like to provide
 finer granularity so that users can choose what they want installed.

 So my plan is to create the following ports:
  * texlive-common, which contains support scripts and files required for
 building and installing the others (e.g. texmf.cnf)
  * texlive-bin, which contains everything built from source (not too
 different from today's texlive_base)
  * one port per texlive collection, e.g. texlive-basic, texlive-latex-
 recommended, texlive-lang-african

 I'm leaning toward one port per collection because I think this is the
 only option with a decent granularity and a reasonable number of ports. It
 would wind up creating 80-90 ports, which is a lot, but not totally
 unreasonable to me. (Note that 30 of these are language-specific packages
 for 30 languages, and another 24 are documentation in different
 languages.) This is basically the approach that Debian takes.

 The other alternatives are one port per package, which would be great in
 that you could install exactly the packages you need, but require 3000+
 ports, which would be a nightmare. One port per scheme (there are 10 of
 them) would also be a decent option, except that the schemes overlap, so
 the ports would conflict. I think one port per collection is the way to
 go.

 I've done a lot of the work necessary for this, including getting the
 binaries to build and the giant distfile carved up into more manageable
 collections. I can provide more details if anyone is interested, and I
 hope to have a patch soon once I get it into reasonably usable shape.

 This has been even more of a painful mess than I expected it to be!

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/16492#comment:47>
MacPorts <http://www.macports.org/>
Ports system for Mac OS