On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 12:19, Philipp Gesang wrote:
What would the inclusion into TL imply?
That people using TeX Live could also install it.
True, but I was, rather selfishly, thinking about what it would imply for the module author. Permanent maintenance of one release over a year? Is it really worth it? After all, most people who come to this list asking for help with their TL context are advised to switch to the minimals.
To me personally it doesn't imply anything special. When I update the module for minimals, it is automatically updated on CTAN for MikTeX and TeX Live as well. It is true that my module is not using much of bleeding edge technology; but when it does, I do not care about TeX Live's ConTeXt compatibility too much. Still, having the module in TeX Live means that when I occasionally do use TeX Live, the modules I might need are available there as well.
2. Until we do something about it, it would be very very desirable to put it to modules.contextgarden.net (I know that it is painful).
If it’s possible now I’d try it asap.
Did you have any problems? In case you did, please contact Patrick.
I did have problems about a year ago. Probably tomorrow--- depending on the weather---I’ll add an xml interface file and comment the module source. After that I’ll give the upload another shot.
I keep my finders crossed for you. :)
Once 1 and 2 are met, I just add a single line to sources that trigger inclusion of the module to minimals (and a separate one for inclusion into TeX Live).
Looks like context needs a package manager.
Do you have any suggestion how it should look like and how it should work? mtx-update is kind-of package manager, but I admit that I miss some GUI (but then again I have no idea how to write a portable GUI).
The GUI would be the last thing I’d start worrying about. Basically it would have to receive a list of locations and the respective VCS, like for instance: ::
t-filter, git, https://github.com/adityam/filter.git transliterator, hg, https://bitbucket.org/phg/transliterator
Then it would call the VCS to checkout the tip (or latest tag or whatever). Each should have a “.install.lua” in the base dir containing instructions about where the files should go. (Best thing is, probably, that no compilation is necessary because everything’s plain text.) A local register could contain version information, filenames, paths etc. of the modules installed.
All the needed modules are already in the garden. (Or are supposed to be on the garden at least.) It is way easier to maintain them all at a single source and then all users can fetch them from that single source than to redirect each user to repository for which one might not even have the necessary software installed (missing hg binary for example). It is true that at the moment you cannot switch to an older version of the module, but that is a slightly unrelated issue that has to be solved somewhat globaly (it is usually a much more serious problem that one cannot roll back ConTeXt version). Mojca