> https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb34-3/tb108preining-distro.pdf
Somebody needed to update TeX Live on Gentoo Linux. I'm going to read it. > From a developer perspective, this is essentially just the base ConTeXt > files, a modified texmfcnf.lua, and a fairly basic makefile. I'm going to read https://github.com/vlasakm/context soon. Until then, I would feel confused and disoriented. ------- Original Message ------- On Tuesday, August 23rd, 2022 at 1:11 AM, Max Chernoff <mse...@telus.net> wrote: > Hi Amano, > > > Wuh. That's a bit complex. > > > Not really. From a user perspective, all that you need to run is > > make install > > From a developer perspective, this is essentially just the base ConTeXt > files, a modified texmfcnf.lua, and a fairly basic makefile. > > > For distribution packages that depend on context for generation of PDF > > documents, having context as a system package is essential. > > > I'd say that ConTeXt is available in nearly every package manager, via > TeX Live. Very very few package managers would have no TeX Live. TeX > Live only includes MkIV, the "stable" version, but most users won't > notice many differences from MkXL/LMTX, the "experimental" version. > > By policy, TeX Live only updates its binaries once per year. This would > be pretty much unworkable with LuaMetaTeX due to its frequent upgrades. > At some point when LuaMetaTeX is stable, the source will be released and > almost certainly be incorporated in TeX Live. > > > And, distribution maintainers can make things work if they understand > > TeX directory structure and texmfcnf.lua. > > > Packaging/installing ConTeXt is actually much easier than doing so for > other TeX systems. With other systems, you need to fiddle around with > fonts and packages, but with ConTeXt, you can pretty much just unpack a > few files. > > Here's a short paper that should give you an overview of how hard > packaging TeX can be: > > https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb34-3/tb108preining-distro.pdf > > > It comes down to care. If they care and they have installation guide, > > they will make it work. > > > I'm not sure who you're talking about here. If you're talking about end- > users, then yes, it's pretty simple to install ConTeXt. I personally > find ConTeXt much easier to install than TeX Live. > > If you're talking about packagers, then packaging ConTeXt is no more > complex than packaging TeX Live (which of course includes ConTeXt MkIV). > The installer documentation for ConTeXt LMTX certainly isn't as detailed > as it is for TeX Live, but LMTX is still beta software. > > If you're trying to say that the ConTeXt developers don't care, then you > may be "right" in a sense, but missing the point entirely. There is no > one who is paid to work on ConTeXt: all of the developers work on it > either as volunteers or to support their own business needs. The current > installer works for them and for many other users. This isn't to say > that they don't care about the users, but rather that they are unlikely > to spend much time making a package for a fairly unpopular distro where > the official installer already works. > > > On Sunday, August 21st, 2022 at 7:13 PM, Michal Vlasák <lahcim8 at > > gmail.com> wrote: > > > Hi Michal, > > > > I prepared a proof of concept, that I am ready to take down immediately > > > at Hans' request, since I don't handle license information properly, and > > > texmf-context is stripped down (just so that the downloads are not too > > > big for proof of concept). > > > > > > https://github.com/vlasakm/context > > > That's quite impressive! > > > > 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. > > > > 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. > > Thanks, > -- Max ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / https://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net archive : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/ wiki : https://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
