Hi folks, so I just got my new shiny MacBook Pro, yippie. And one of the first things I did, naturally, was to install Fink on it (the pangocairo branch, even).
One of the packages I wanted to install was (and is) wireshark, which needs gtk+2, which at some points pulls in doxygen. So far so good, but now the "problem" for me is that doxygen wants tetex-base. But I am using MacTeX / TeXLive these days, simply because tetex is no longer maintained (not just as a Fink package *g*, the whole thing really has been officially dead since July 2006). But I absolutely need some of the newer TeX stuff, so I have to use it. I guess it might be the same for some other people. OK, so at this point I could just fold, install tetex-base anyway and keep /usr/texbin before it in my PATH. Maybe remove the parts of it which are only BuildDepends afterwards. But then, this would leave the problem for others to go through... Not nice. Of course, TeXLive is not tetex, so making a tetex "wrapper" around it would cause lots of problems and headaches. There is just no point in doing that, I believe.. If a package wants to extend tetex, it would be silly to try to coerce it to work atop TeXLive. But then, doxygen only needs to be able to use "epstopdf" and "latex". There is no reason why it shouldn't be able to work with TeXLive, or Fink's tetex, or virtually any other TeX distro out there. Of course in Fink we only have tetex-base, system-tetex, etc., so there is no way to distinguish between packages which just *use* (La)TeX, and those which want to extend it and thus need deeper access. So, why not add that ability? For example, we could introduce some new virtual packages, along the line of the existing "pdftex", "hyperref", "dvipdfm", "epstopdf" etc. packages -- stuff like "latex", "tex", maybe more if we need them. Then packages like doxygen or latexmk would just depend on these, while packages which try to extend tetex would still require tetex-base. Then, it would be easy to write a system-mactex package, which simply adds /usr/texbin to Fink's PATH (at the end), OR symlinks latex, tex, epstopdf, etc., and provides the correct packages. It would *NOT* try to provide tetex-base etc. Of course system-tetex & tetex-FOO would also provide the new virtual packages. This way, we would be able to go forwards with TeX support, leaving all roads: I.e. we'd be able to continue our tetex package, OR add a TeXLive package one day, OR add yet another TeX distro one day. People who want MacTeX could use it for lots of stuff which only needs to run latex (like doxygen or latexmk, and others). Packagers could declare the pkg dependencies with more detail. What do you think? Cheers, Max Am 06.03.2008 um 09:19 schrieb Martin Costabel: > Alexander Hansen wrote: > [] >> With regard to TeX, we seem to have vocal people who want a newer >> TeX >> distro but purport not to know what to do to implement it. We should >> make extra sure that changing from tetex is as painless as >> possible, to >> satisfy everybody. > > Some more remarks on the tex situation: > > - Fink needs, for various reasons, its own tex package. This needs > to be > able to coexist with a tex system installed from one of the texlive > variants. > - The currently existing Fink tetex packages may be outdated, but they > are good enough for a lot of people. This includes myself, and I and > people around me are using it in our work on a daily basis. But this > includes also a very active group of Fink users and developers in > Japan > who would probably object seriously if Fink suddenly switched to a > less > well-tested new version with a completely different structure. > - Creating new Fink packages based on texlive would be hard work. > Until > recently I think this would have been far too hard for the currently > available manpower, because texlive is not exactly adhering to the > open > source philosophy. They don't provide source tarballs you can download > and then simply run configure; make; make install to get a working > system. They really want you to download the whole precompiled > collection and install it in their way. AFAICS, recently some people > have been creating source tarballs that can be used in the standard > way. > We could profit of this work and that of darwinports and debian in > this > respect. > - Any system-tex package has to be compatible with the Fink tex > packages, so creating one has to be an afterthought to creating Fink > tex > packages. > > I agree that the current texlive/mactex system is now sufficiently > stable so that a Fink system-tex package using it is possible, but for > the reasons mentioned above, I don't see it happening soon. > > Another reason no one really wants to spell out clearly (but I'll do > it > anyway) is that the tetex maintainer who is also the Fink project > leader > has, for almost two years, not had enough time. Several of the core > maintainers and developers are in the same situation or have already > given up. I feel the same threat as John does, namely that if the > current situation is continuing for much longer, there is a real > danger > that the whole Fink project is going down the drain. > > -- > Martin > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft > Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. > http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ > _______________________________________________ > Fink-devel mailing list > Fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > http://news.gmane.org/gmane.os.apple.fink.devel > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. 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