http://lmtx.pragma-ade.nl/install-lmtx/texmf-context.zip is not versioned. If the file changes later, linux distributions refuse to use the file. I wish ConTeXt and LuaMetaTex were versioned and provided `offline` build instructions. The vast majority of programs are versioned and can be built easily offline. Even if they were distributed as binary files, if they are versioned, I can still make linux packages out of them. ------- Original Message ------- On Monday, August 15th, 2022 at 9:56 PM, Max Chernoff wrote:

Okay, I'm seeing a few separate issues here.

1. Gentoo expects to compile everything from source.

This isn't an option here since LuaMetaTeX doesn't have any source available (yet). So for the time being, you'll need to use the provided binaries. These support pretty much every architecture, so this shouldn't really be a problem.

2. You want to install ConTeXt LMTX system-wide.

This is doable with the standard Linux installer script. Just make sure to run the script as root and install the files in /opt/context. This is what I've done on my system, and it works quite well.

$ ls -l $(type -p context) lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 10 Jul 28 00:33 /opt/context/tex/texmf-linux-64/bin/context -> luametatex*

3. You want to install ConTeXt without any network access.

The easiest way to do this would be to install on a system with internet, then just copy over the files.

If you want to use the "original" installer files, it shouldn't be impossible, but probably not too easy either. (All steps below are untested)

The platform-independent stuff is all in one big zip, located at:

http://lmtx.pragma-ade.nl/install-lmtx/texmf-context.zip

Unzip this file as "<context root>/tex/texmf-context/".

Then you also need to download all of the binaries. You will need to download all of the paths listed in this file:

http://lmtx.pragma-ade.nl/install-lmtx/tex/texmf-linux-64.tma

All of those files need to be placed in "<context root>/tex/texmf-linux-

64/bin".

Then to finish installing you'll need to run "mtxrun --generate" and "context --make". There are probably a bunch of other steps that I'm missing, but this should get you close.

Again, probably easier to just use the regular installer.

4. ConTeXt is really picky about texmfcnf stuff.

This is an issue that I've had too:

https://github.com/latex3/l3build/issues/232

Pretty much any modification of anything texmfcnf-related with ConTeXt will completely prevent it from running. There's a thread discussing the problem (but with no real solutions) here:

https://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2020-September/046099.html

And a Wiki page here:

https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Custom_Configuration

I agree that this texmfcnf stuff makes it really difficult to install or use ConTeXt with any kind of custom paths. Does anyone know how to properly configure a texmfcnf with custom paths?

Hopefully this is of some help. -- Max