That's too vague to be helpful. Having written some of the Debian installation materials, I would find it useful to know what places were wrong or misleading so that it could be improved.
Good to hear this part of the ConTeXt labyrinth still has some care
taking inhabitants ...
So, here are some specifics about the experiences following the wiki
installation page for Debian. It reminds me of catching a young koetje
with too many efforts, and just when you are about to give up, the thing
is already in the barn.
First of all, why the page is rather misleading:
* In the beginning the installation text seems to intend a global
installation of ConTeXt, but later on it silently switches towards a
user specific one. Latter is fine with me, but do we really have to
change the system-wide TeX installation for that?
* The system-wide installation is changed without using the debian
package system at all. If there is a reason for this, it is not
mentioned in the text.
Besides, the wiki link to this page says that the installation is
intended for people who like to use apt. Well, quite the contrary:
this installation procedure is for people who *dont* want to use apt
for their context installation, because ConTeXt is installed across
different parts of the debian package system, apt is just used to
get some general TeX/tetex-packages.
I won't go into details here WhyThisIsNotAGoodThing, if it´s all about
a box intended for "Personal ConTeXing" it might be o.k., but
most certainly not for a box that hosts different users and
TeX flavors, so that it could use a single management interface like
the debian one.
* In the end, debian works out perfectly well now, as shown below. Plus
there is a more debianish way to have a system-wide fresh ConTeXt
koetje on your box every other release day (s. below).
Ok, so much for generics. Now lets go along the installation text and
see what happens on a fresh debian (unstable release 2006-10-02) system:
1. First we make sure to have packages tetex-bin, tetex-extra, lmodern
and cm-super and install the new metapost and pdftex versions by
hand.
2. What now? Ok, now we are switching to a user specific installation.
Where? Any pathname restrictions? The text doesn´t mention
anything, but lets call it ~myuser/texmf, just to be on the safe
side. A lot of people may never have heard about TEXMFHOME
environment variables. It could be helpful to mention it at this
point.
3. we download and unzip cont-tmf.zip and then at the end of
~myuser/texmf > texexec --make
... lots of output ...
used engineformatpath : /home/myuser/texmf/web2c/pdfetex/
TeX binary : pdfetex
format(s) : en nl metafun mptopdf
total run time : 4 seconds
warning : use 'texmfstart texexec' instead
Hmm. A warning. Do we have to care? Anyway, lets continue.
4. What now, pt. 2: the big heading says "Context first time upgrade",
but the small text a few lines above says
"If you have already followed the *following* steps"
(my emphasis) which seems a little odd to some non-native speakers,
if they notice that fine point anyway: it doesnt say previous
steps, it says following steps, the steps we haven´t read so far ...
After some ruminations it seems we just have two alternatives here:
if you follow these instructions the first time,
please do the following
if you just want to upgrade cont-tmf,
please go to chapter foobar
Alright, so we´re doing a "first time upgrade", since we´re
following these instructions the first time and have an old ConTeXt
in the standard debian tetex package. According to the text we should
look out for old formats. No search results in any user
dot-directory.
Our last step generated cont-en, cont-nl and mptopdf format files in
~myuser/texmf/web2c/pdfetex/
"kpsewhich cont-en.fmt" does only return the global format we created
during the pdfetex installation in step 1. Even a
# find / -iname cont-en.fmt
returns nothing more. This step seems finished, now we tell TeX how
to find our formats in the next step by changing the configlets.
5. First, according to the wiki, we need to comment out the format
generation of mptopdf, metafun and cont-en, which is controlled by
/etc/texmf/fmt.d/01tetex.cnf (we notice that there is no metafun
format in our local directory, but maybe thats intentional).
We run update-fmtutil. Still just the old metafun.mem in
/var/lib/texmf/web2c, what to do about this? No instructions, so
lets just leave it at that, and add the {$engine,} subpath string
to TEXFORMATS, followed by an update-texmf.
6. Everythings o.k. now? Let´s see:
~myuser/ > texexec --version
TeXExec 5.4.3 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1997-2005
texexec : TeXExec 5.4.3 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1997-2005
texutil : TeXUtil 9.0.1 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1992-2006
tex : pdfeTeX, 3.141592-1.30.6-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.5)
context : ver: 2006.08.08 21:51
cont-en : ver: 2006.08.08 21:51 fmt: 2006.9.30 mes:
english
total run time : 0 seconds
warning : use 'texmfstart texexec' instead
Hmm. Again the warning. What is this texmfstart thing anyway? In
~myuser/scripts/context/ruby/texmfstart.rb
~myuser/scripts/context/stubs/lib/texmfstart
there is something, but maybe it is not (yet?) needed. So let´s give
it a try and create the first "official" ConTeXt test file hello.tex:
\starttext
Hello World
\stoptext
and then:
~myuser/ > texexec --pdf hello.tex
...
... lots of output that looks o.k., until:
...
fonts : using map file:original-public-lm(/home/myuser
/texmf/tex/context/base/pdfr-ec.tex)[1.1{/home/myuser/texmf/fonts
/map/dvipdfm/context/original-empty.map}{/home/myuser/texmf/fonts
/map/dvipdfm/context/texnansi-public-lm.map}{/home/myuser/texmf
/fonts/map/dvipdfm/context/original-base.map
Warning: pdfetex (file /home/myuser/texmf/fonts/map/dvipdfm/
context/original-base.map): invalid entry for `fmvr8x': font file
missing
...
... and a lot more of these warnings follow, also in the 2nd run:
...
Warning: pdfetex (file/home/myuser/texmf/fonts/map/dvipdfm/context
/original-public-lm.map): invalid entry for `cmmib9': font file
missing}]
systems : end file hello at line 3
)
Output written on hello.pdf (1 page, 2611 bytes).
Transcript written on hello.log.
return code : 0
run time : 0 seconds
sorting and checking : running texutil
TeXUtil 9.0.1 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1992-2006
action : processing commands, lists and registers
option : sorting IJ under Y
option : converting high ASCII values
input file : hello.tui
output file : hello.tuo
passed commands : 19
remapped keys : 0
register entries : 1 -> 0 entries 0 references synonym
entries : 3 -> 1 entries
bad entries : 3
embedded files : 1
remark : 'texutil' is now part of 'texexec'
warning : use 'texmfstart texutil' instead
total run time : 1 seconds
warning : use 'texmfstart texexec' instead
Hmm. The texmfstart warning looks familiar, but missing font
files? Strange. Anyway, the pdf-file looks ok, so lets be more
adventurous, and try the second ConTeXt test file from the wiki,
the one with the little red hat:
texexec --pdf littleredhat.tex
TeXExec 5.4.3 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1997-2005
fixing engine variable : pdfetex
executable : pdfetex
format : cont-en
inputfile : littleredhat
output : pdftex
interface : en
current mode : none
TeX run : 1
This is pdfeTeX, Version 3.141592-1.30.6-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.5)
(/home/myuser/texmf/web2c/natural.tcx)
entering extended mode
(./littleredhat.tex
ConTeXt ver: 2006.08.08 21:51 fmt: 2006.9.30 int: english mes:
english
language : language en is active