At 11:01 12/06/2003 -0400, you wrote:
I've been a debian woody user for a long time, now, and the conclusion I eventually came to was this:
* debian's strict adherence to directory structure conventions has made the tetex package difficult to maintain, since it's split into many parts, spread all over the filesystem. (This is really just an inference of mine.)
The nice thing about tex is that it is quite well organized (in its own tree) and splitting it up over many places makes it a pain to maintain; for instance, do the debian people offer extensive cleanup-remove scripts? I wonder how the tex community is supposed to provide support to users if all redistributers would change the tex tree organization to their needs.
* context has never worked for me in debian, and submitting a bug report looks hopeless, given the long length of the bug list. I haven't checked in a long time, though.
* I wasn't able to use the "equivs" package to get the debian packaging system to accept my own tetex installation, so I could not install, e.g., the docbook-xsl-st package.
* finally, I settled on this: install the debian tetex packages but don't use them directly. Also install teTeX from source in /opt, and set my PATH so that when I say texexec I get the real tetex and not debian's broken tetex.
what i do here is the following: (1) when a new tex live arrives, i copy this to /tex/texmf (2) i keep my local context + some fonts in /tex/texmf-local (3) i put all new fonts (mostly commercial) in /tex/texmf-fonts (4) i put all the binaries in /tex/texmf-linux/bin|web2c (so, i also have texmf-mswin, texmf-darwin, etc) if needed in project, i also have a /tex/texmf-project I have set up texmf.cnf as well as cont-sys.tex set up in the texmf-local tree to enable metapost processing Finally I get rid of all the os specific settings and hook these trees into the whole: btw 1, in most cases i just use TEXROOT=/tex btw 2, i also have a minimal 50 meg main texmf tree which makes tex run much faster so, i use tex live (tetex,fptex) as basis and not the linux distributers alternative # . setuptex # mktexlsr # texexec --make --alone TEXROOT=/usr/local/tex export TEXROOT TEXMFMAIN=$TEXROOT/texmf TEXMFLOCAL=$TEXROOT/texmf-local TEXMFFONTS=$TEXROOT/texmf-fonts TEXMFPROJECT=$TEXROOT/texmf-project TEXMFOS=$TEXROOT/texmf-linux VARTEXMF=$TEXROOT/texmf-var export TEXMFMAIN export TEXMFLOCAL export TEXMFPROJECT export TEXMFFONTS export TEXMFOS export VARTEXMF PATH=$TEXMFOS/bin:$PATH export PATH HOMETEXMF= export HOMETEXMF # the next lines fail on dec alpha os's, so there you need # to comment them (bug traced down by kees van marle/martin # corrino) # # HOMETEXMF=/nonexist # export HOMETEXMF TEXMFCNF=$TEXROOT/texmf{-local,}/web2c TEXMF='{$TEXMFOS,$TEXMFPROJECT,$TEXMFFONTS,$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFMAIN}' TEXFORMATS=$TEXMFOS/web2c TEXPOOL=$TEXFORMATS MPPOOL=$TEXFORMATS export TEXMFCNF export TEXMF export TEXFORMATS export TEXPOOL export MPPOOL ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- information: http://www.pragma-ade.com/roadmap.pdf documentation: http://www.pragma-ade.com/showcase.pdf -------------------------------------------------------------------------