On 2000-09-29 11:07:36 -0400, Tom Kacvinsky wrote:
> I think that most people who are on this list know how to compile the
> binaries from source. But these competent people ask for RPMs or
> Debian packages because they are managing what is installed on their
> boxes with a package manager. That might be an egregious assumption,
> but I met Martin at TUG 2000, and he strikes me as being very astute
> at source code compiling, etc...
Thanks. :-)
I'll explain the problem: The company I'm working for is
evaluating the use of pdflatex in a commercial product. Target
plattforms are Linux/Suse, Linux/Redhat, Solaris/Sparc and Irix.
Distributing a source tree is definitely _not_ an option; the
customers don't know TeX, don't know how to administrate or even
build it and shouldn't be bothered with it. So we have to
distribute binaries including formats.
For Linux it would be nice (and is a natural assumption) to be
able to tell them: Install this and this package from your
distribution (they know _that_ much).
But: the pdftex in teTeX-stable is simply to old (we need 0.14x).
So know I'm rebuilding the Suse-RPMs from the beta release.
This is only a start (since it's no solution for Solaris & Irix);
I'll have a look at TeX Live next and try to isolate the things
we need (pdftex + LaTeX + some packages).
[...]
> Anyway, my point is this: I assume that when one asks for a package,
> its not because they are lazy and don't want to compile from source,
> it is because they want to have better management of what is installed
> on their boxes.
Yes.
Best regards
Martin
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