On Tue Aug 23, 2022 at 3:11 AM CEST, Max Chernoff wrote:
On Sunday, August 21st, 2022 at 7:13 PM, Michal Vlasák <lahcim8 at gmail.com> wrote:
There is documentation about how it can be used. I hope its obvious how I got "texmf" (texmf-context.zip, unzip, delete some files I didn't want to take up space),
One suggestion: instead of unpacking and committing "texmf-context.zip", I'd recommend adding
https://github.com/contextgarden/context-mirror/
as a git submodule. That way, it's easy to keep the files up-to-date, your repo will use less space, and there's a clearer separation between your package files and ConTeXt itself.
Yes, you are right that would be much better. Unfortunately it seems that git submodules are not included in archives created by `git archive` (which is also what Github uses for the automatic release zip / tars that I have linked above). As I wanted the published tarballs / zips self-contained ("offline only"), I would need to use some script to generate custom archives that I would upload to Github as release assets. This would require special care both from me and the hypothetical packagers who would have to use the less discoverable asset instead of the standard "git(hub) archive" way. Anyway I think that a much better solution can be made once luametatex source code becomes available - then there wouldn't be a reason to resort to commiting binaries into version control and/or unnecessarily restrict to Linux only. Or rather no solution would be needed at all, since the "mtxrun" and "context" wrapper commands and "texmfcnf.lua" files will be probably specific for each packaging target (different directories on different distros, and Unix vs Windows), and thus the matter of packagers. And copying a binary and a directory with runtime files is the usual task of an install step of "package descriptions", so maybe even a Makefile like I had wouldn't be needed.
A bit of a disclaimer: I don't really recommend pursuing this further. Some time ago I was also that foolish to try to package TeX for Linux distributions. Unfortunately I think that the result will never by optimal - as demonstrated by the previous discussions, the usual purposes of packages (to integrate software into the system) don't apply much to TeX / ConTeXt - there one wants something more or less self contained (so that updates are under control, no random non-essential libraries brake things, etc.).
Well packaging the files into .rpm/.deb isn't really a bad idea; what's bad is the weird modifications that distros make, plus the fact that nearly every distro delays updates by quite some time. I generally agree that installing TeX straight from the source is better, although I can see why some users prefer to install from their distro repos.
One benefit of the fact that ConTeXt LMTX is not packaged anywhere came to my mind: when someone has a problem with ConTeXt there is a very high chance that it isn't because they are using a very old version. In contrast to MkIV where one can imagine up to 4 year old installs (say up to 1 year delay in TeX Live and 3 years in the distro for the "stable" ones). Michal