FS#10256 - tetex: Add info about texlive to install script

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Jan Spakula (bender02) - Wednesday, 23 April 2008, 01:39 GMT
Last edited by Greg (dolby) - Monday, 21 July 2008, 15:02 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Jason Chu (jason)
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version 2007.08-2
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 9
Private No

Details

Description:

I would like to ask for adding a couple of lines to the
tetex.install script, advertising that tetex is unmaintained upstream,
and that a "replacement" (texlive) is available in community.

The main reason for this request is to bring texlive to attention to
users, who are unaware of texlive and install tetex since it's a
dependency of various tex-related editors. TeTeX is slowly becoming too
old (pdftex compiler has much improved since, and also various latex
packages evolve (eg. beamer, pgf and such)).

The related discussion, of which this is the result, has been at arch-general:
http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-general/2008-April/017441.html

I would suggest this message:
"TeTeX distribution (while working) is unmaintaned upstream,
there is an alternative TeX distribution (TeXLive) in the community repo."

Thanks for considering this request.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Greg (dolby)
Monday, 21 July 2008, 15:02 GMT
Reason for closing:  Won't implement
Additional comments about closing:  Texlive is gonna fully replace tetex in extra when new release is out. Therefore this makes this feature request invalid
Comment by Eric Oliver Paquette (inxistant) - Wednesday, 23 April 2008, 02:04 GMT
I vote for it!
Comment by Christoph Siegenthaler (Sigi) - Wednesday, 23 April 2008, 05:24 GMT
Voted, good call.
Comment by Anonymous Submitter - Wednesday, 23 April 2008, 09:20 GMT
teTeX is old, Arch is bleeding edge. This does not fit.
Comment by Erwin Van de Velde (evdvelde) - Wednesday, 23 April 2008, 09:41 GMT
I agree with previous comments... we all like the future and new stuff! :)
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Wednesday, 23 April 2008, 10:52 GMT
Either we remove tetex and provide texlive by default, or we don't use texlive at all. Recommending people to install community packages instead of official ones isn't something we should implement.
Comment by Jason Chu (jason) - Wednesday, 23 April 2008, 14:32 GMT
Alright, JGC, how do you propose we deal with the dependencies on tetex in extra? We can't move texlive to extra because the only person who wants to maintain it is firmicus and we can't have things in extra depend on things in community.
Comment by Jan Spakula (bender02) - Wednesday, 23 April 2008, 14:44 GMT
@Jan: 1) The message does not recommend anything, it is just to make TeX using people *aware* of TeXLive.
2) A question on replacing tetex with texlive in extra was asked on forums http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=47145, answered negatively by tomk (essentially: there's not enought devpower/devinterest to maintain texlive in extra).
3) Only one dev (Thomas) reacted to my suggestion to move tetex to community (see ML link above), he said "Ha! texlive-core already provides tetex. Therefore, you can use all applications that depend on tetex with texlive instead. This situation is good enough for me." I concluded that this move is *not* going to happen, since no dev is interested in such a change.

Your reaction + Tom + Thomas's => nothing's going to happen. Is that so?
Comment by Jan Spakula (bender02) - Wednesday, 23 April 2008, 14:47 GMT
As I wrote to ML, there are only couple of deps of tetex in extra: kile, latex2html, lyx, texmacs (essentially latex editors). The problem might be with makedeps: evince, kdegraphics, yodl (maybe you could keep tetex installed on the build machine?).
Comment by Connor Behan (connorbehan) - Wednesday, 23 April 2008, 15:16 GMT
+1
Comment by Greg (dolby) - Saturday, 26 April 2008, 11:23 GMT
That is NOT a way to deal with this. PKGBUILDs should work for ABS too. If tetex is installed only on the build machine and is nowhere to be found then it breaks compilation of the packages that makedepend on it.
Comment by Jan Spakula (bender02) - Saturday, 26 April 2008, 13:44 GMT
No they don't. Nothing *links* against any tetex libraries - those that makedep packages only need a *working tex compiler*. I use evince and (used) kdegraphics without any problems, using their tex functionality (=ability to display dvi files) without any problems with texlive.

If if would make you happy, I'll suggest keeping texlive-core on the build machine instead of tetex (if tetex is going to make it to community, it would not make any difference).
Comment by Jan Spakula (bender02) - Saturday, 26 April 2008, 13:46 GMT
Sorry dolby, I understand your problem now. And yes, you're right, the abs would bail out on those.

Loading...