What is the plan with TeXLive?

PDExperiment626 · 2008-04-15 13:32:52

After struggling for almost a year to get the TeXLive packages from community to work on my system, I am left wondering if there is any real plan to have TeXLive replace tetex in ArchLinux. TeXLive 2007 has been out over a year and there are still bugs in the packages that are not present when doing a standard DVD iso install from over a year ago.

While I think firmicus has done an excellent job creating the initial set of TeXLive packages; I fear there are not enough people doing debugging on these packages, when tetex still sits in core as the default latex installation mechanism. TeXLive requires a lot of testing and debugging (debian has a taskforce for it) and having only a handful of people testing these packages still is leaving many bugs unchecked even though these packages have been out for months.

I am hoping that the testing for TeXLive 2008 is handled in a more systematic way when it is released this summer; and that maybe, the devs will consider formally replacing tetex as it ceased development back in 2006.

Ashren · 2008-04-15 13:37:07

I volunteer as a tester.

Are there any specific ways I could test TeXLive for bugs, besides using it to create simple documents and letters?

tomk · 2008-04-15 14:12:53

Firstly, a very obvious question: have you reported the packaging bugs that you have found to firmicus?

I'm very happy for Debian that they have a texlive taskforce, but I'm sure you appreciate the significant difference between their resources and ours. In Archworld, work like this is typically handled by interested members of the community - firmicus has done a huge volume of work on the packages, now it's up to those who actually want to use it to take the next steps.

Regarding the possibility of bringing texlive into the official repos, there are currently two missing ingredients among the existing dev team: interest and time. AFAIK none of us is a habitual tex user, and that would be the first requirement. Also, most of us do as much Arch work as we can fit in anyway - that's where time becomes important.

One of the reasons the Community repo exists is to address these exact circumstances, and to provide Arch users with access to packages that the dev team can't get to. I would strongly recommend that interested tex users get together to support firmicus' work and formulate a thorough testing programme. The wiki and forum are at your disposal, should you decide to get the ball rolling.

arooaroo · 2008-04-15 14:27:51

How about inviting Firmicus to be a dev in order to plug that gap? He may be too busy himself, but seems an obvious first port of call.

PDExperiment626 · 2008-04-15 15:10:56

I should have mentioned that I spent a lot of time doing testing on these packages before they got into community a few months ago. Unfortunately, I had to stop this endeavor because I needed to focus on the finishing of my thesis. As for my current problems with the texlive packages, I've already figured out what the exact issue is (a broken config file introduced by a patch).

My post isn't regarding the specific problem I am having; I can fix that. My question was really regarding the idea of tetex being replaced by TeXLive because this would boost bug reporting intrinsically for the TeXLive system. I mean honestly, I think it will be difficult getting enough people interested in really testing TeXLive if it's always going to be sitting out in community in a state of conflict with tetex, especially when many people are likely to use a dummy pkgbuild and a standard texlive dvd iso install if they really want texlive working consistently on their system.

I can appreciate that the devs don't have the interest or time to pursue getting TeXLive into the core repos; and that's pretty much what I wanted to know. If the issue were as simple as fixing bugs, I might be more hopeful for the long-term status of TeXLive; but as it stands, the methodologies of updating, patching, initial installation, and tex tree layout all have to be officially settled upon before TeXLive can be reliably packaged for use by archlinux users.

I have contributed to the AUR and to the Wiki before; and I have been using arch for close to two years now. That being said, TeXLive does not seem to fit nicely into the development paradigm of the smaller and simpler packages usually found in community. Indeed, there isn't much point in spending lots of time debugging texlive 2007, when texlive 2008 will be released in a few weeks.

tomk · 2008-04-15 16:37:44

PDExperiment626 wrote:

I mean honestly, I think it will be difficult getting enough people interested in really testing TeXLive if it's always going to be sitting out in community in a state of conflict with tetex

I would disagree. People who are interested in testing are likely to be tex users. I would expect tex users to be aware of the development status of texlive relative to tetex, and to have a preference for the actively developed alternative.
I also wonder about this "sitting out in community" idea. The Community repo has been, and remains, very successful, and is enabled by default. IMO the TUs do a very good job of maintaining it.

PDExperiment626 wrote:

the methodologies of updating, patching, initial installation, and tex tree layout all have to be officially settled upon before TeXLive can be reliably packaged for use by archlinux users.

And the best people to do that work are those who will eventually wish to use the packages. If "officially settled" means "settled by the Arch dev team", we come back to the time-and-interest deficit noted above.
It's worth mentioning that many aspects of our distro that are now "official" originated with the community - off the top of my head, the x86_64 port and our Perl policy come to mind.

PDExperiment626 wrote:

TeXLive does not seem to fit nicely into the development paradigm of the smaller and simpler packages usually found in community.

You could be right. In that case, a KDEmod-style approach would be worth looking at i.e. an independent development/packaging effort resulting in a high-quality, well-maintained, independent repo.

ConnorBehan · 2008-04-15 17:41:18

tomk wrote:

PDExperiment626 wrote:
TeXLive does not seem to fit nicely into the development paradigm of the smaller and simpler packages usually found in community.
You could be right. In that case, a KDEmod-style approach would be worth looking at i.e. an independent development/packaging effort resulting in a high-quality, well-maintained, independent repo.

I don't know about that... TeXLive is 85MB which is about twice the size of tetex but that doesn't mean it's too bloated to be official. Just look at OpenOffice, JRE/JDK and acroread... other large programs that are in extra.

What makes KDEmod better suited to an independent repo is the fact that the standard (actively maintained) KDE distribution is already in the official one. KDEmod's numerous small packages agree with "The Arch Way" more than KDE's few large packages... but Arch aims to be as vanilla as possible by default, so in that respect KDE is more "The Arch Way" than KDEmod.

Arch which is known to most as a "bleeding edge" distro should not be stuck with a 2-year-old, never-to-be-maintained-again implementation of TeX. If TeXLive in community does not work or has major problems as you said, we still need tetex for now... while someone focuses on getting the texlive packages to work as smoothly as the tetex one. If none of the developers are interested in doing this, I second the idea to make firmicus a new developer.

Once this is done and TeXLive has been thoroughly tested and debugged on Arch, it should become the official TeX package in a repo enabled by default (be it core, extra or community) and all packages that depend on tetex should be modified so that they depend on texlive.

Last edited by ConnorBehan (2008-04-15 17:42:25)

bender02 · 2008-04-15 19:10:40

ConnorBehan wrote:

If TeXLive in community does not work or has major problems as you said, we still need tetex for now...

My experience with TeXlive was quite smooth (as much as it can be with the individual tex packages updates). PDExperiment626's problem was with one particular patch/config file, as he said. I wouldn't call this "a major problem" - then 3/4 of packages in extra have major problems, because they don't work (out of the box) on some systems. I personally had more problems with tetex than with texlive.

I don't quite understand your problem - what's wrong with having texlive in community with firmicus (plus possibly some more TUs) maintaining it? I'm pretty sure people using tex know the status of things, and they can smoothly without big problems choose whichever tex implementation they want to use. How is a package in community worse than one in extra?

Stefan Husmann · 2008-04-15 19:32:47

It could be the case that because the upcoming texlive 2008 will contain man new features (luatex, xindy, many new fonts) there more often will be the need aof time consuming maintenance. So it would be great if some TeX users could for a workgroup to support Firmicus. I would like to help.

The teTeX package was a great package when it came out more than 12 years ago. But it is unmaintained and sholud not be used. Having it in extra will cause a lot of people think: 'Oh, that package is official, let us take that.' So moving it to unsupported would be a good step.

dolby · 2008-04-15 19:41:30

i had suggested in a bug report users who actually use texlive start building applications that are in official repos and depend on tetex, replacing tetex with texlive as a dependency and uploading them to the AUR. that would speed things up and make more easier the transition. i havent seen anyone doing that yet

attila · 2008-04-15 19:59:19

@PDExperiment626 We all, users and devs, do this here in our private time so i don't understand your "testing for TeXLive 2008 is handled in a more systematic way" because this testing is our all job and not only of a certain group of people. That is why i miss suggestions in your statement.

For me i must say i don't use TeX very much often because at work i have to use other software but perhaps you or someone else have some tex files with more than some "\usepackage". So we can share such documents in a wiki as source (*.tex plus the needed include files) and as the result of it (*.pdf) so if Firmicus will fight with creating the packages we can test texlive with this files.

My /opt/texlive has 30445 files and i don't know what we can do more to test texlive because that it works is generally the job of the devs from texlive. I don't understand why they love to distribute this windows like setup install dvd and that debian need a taskforce to package it says all for me.

At the end my private view about texlive/tetex: Still again i like tetex more than texlive because at the moment i don't have the feeling that the devs of texlive have any plan that their work will be better integrate in a package system of a linux distribution but that is why i think Firmicus makes a heroic job.

Sigi · 2008-04-15 20:18:07

I just started to use LaTex again and this time I was able to get firmicus' Texlive packages working (which was not the case a year ago). Great work.

ConnorBehan · 2008-04-15 20:27:16

Stefan Husmann wrote:

'Oh, that package is official, let us take that.' So moving it to unsupported would be a good step.

Exactly... extra is the first place I look and it's also the first place most packagers look when listing dependencies. My first time using TeX was with the pidgin-latex plugin. I thought "oh maybe I should learn how to write cool math formulae in instant messages to confuse the hell out of my friends." I soon found out that to see the formulae, people at the receiving end had to have a latex plugin as well... but I kept it installed and eventually started learning TeX enough to put it to practical use.

But anyway that's beside the point... the package I wanted was pidgin-latex and I looked at the dependencies and saw "tetex" so I installed "tetex." I wasn't thinking about how many TeX implementations were available and the current status of each one, I was just blatantly reading dependencies and installing them. As a result I got stuck with an unmaintained obsolete package and didn't even realize it until about 4 months later.

It's certainly okay to offer texlive AND tetex packages in case tetex still has a few advantages but however you want to do it, the system should be setup so that the average Arch user who doesn't know much about TeX and just needs a TeX package to get something done, should pick texlive rather than tetex. Encouraging most people to use deprecated packages for years and years while only a select few seek out newer alternatives seems more like "The Debian Way" than "The Arch Way."

bender02 · 2008-04-15 21:40:39

ConnorBehan wrote:

But anyway that's beside the point... the package I wanted was pidgin-latex and I looked at the dependencies and saw "tetex" so I installed "tetex." I wasn't thinking about how many TeX implementations were available and the current status of each one, I was just blatantly reading dependencies and installing them. As a result I got stuck with an unmaintained obsolete package and didn't even realize it until about 4 months later.

Just to clarify: tetex is unmaintaned, by it is by no means obsolete.
As far as binaries go: *the tex language* itself was frozen in 1989 by its author, Donald Knuth. The only things that evolve are some of its extensions, most notably pdftex. Moreover, the only visible difference I was able to track down since pdftex shipped with tetex to now is that when you include certain types of pictures (some jpg's or png's or pdf's), they render a bit better in the new one than in the old one. With the new tl2008 should come luatex, ok, but that's still a new stuff and people using it definitely know about texlive/tetex difference.
So for instance, for pidgin-latex it makes *no difference* whether you have tetex or texlive installed.

As far as packages go: yes, they evolve, but slowly. For instance for writing papers (eg. in most of mathematics) it makes no difference whether you're using tetex of texlive.

I don't mean to say that we should not move in the direction of eventually replacing tetex with texlive completely (and I'm willing to contribute); I just don't like when I see screams "tetex is obsolete! we must ditch it immediately! all the dev/user power to test texlive!", without *an example* why it's actually worth the effort (except for repeating "tetex is obsolete!"). After asking this in the original texlive thread someone actually produced an example (with the included pictures, as mentioned above), but that's the only one when someone actually *needed* to use newer pdftex.

EDIT:

Stefan Hussmann wrote:

'Oh, that package is official, let us take that.' So moving it to unsupported would be a good step.

I'm all in for that. Nevertheless, I think people care less about extra/community, and more about the dependencies (like ConnorBehan noted).

Last edited by bender02 (2008-04-15 21:53:37)

bender02 · 2008-04-15 21:47:50

dolby wrote:

i had suggested in a bug report users who actually use texlive start building applications that are in official repos and depend on tetex, replacing tetex with texlive as a dependency and uploading them to the AUR. that would speed things up and make more easier the transition. i havent seen anyone doing that yet

I thought it's not a good practice to upload the packages that are in official repos to AUR.
EDIT: I just checked ('cd /var/abs/core; grep tetex */PKGBUILD'): no packages in core depend on tetex. From extra only these: kile, latex2html, lyx, texmacs; makedeps: evince, kdegraphics, yodl.

Last edited by bender02 (2008-04-15 21:58:17)

Ramses de Norre · 2008-04-15 22:09:22

bender02 wrote:

EDIT: I just checked ('cd /var/abs/core; grep tetex */PKGBUILD'): no packages in core depend on tetex. From extra only these: kile, latex2html, lyx, texmacs; makedeps: evince, kdegraphics, yodl.

Mind makedepends, the only packages in extra really depending on tetex are texmacs, latex2html, lyx and kile.
I found this like this:

find /var/abs/extra/ -name PKGBUILD|xargs grep tetex|grep ":depends"

Sigi · 2008-04-15 23:45:15

Ramses de Norre wrote:

bender02 wrote:
EDIT: I just checked ('cd /var/abs/core; grep tetex */PKGBUILD'): no packages in core depend on tetex. From extra only these: kile, latex2html, lyx, texmacs; makedeps: evince, kdegraphics, yodl.
Mind makedepends, the only packages in extra really depending on tetex are texmacs, latex2html, lyx and kile.
I found this like this:
find /var/abs/extra/ -name PKGBUILD|xargs grep tetex|grep ":depends"

That's exactly what bender02 wrote.

PDExperiment626 · 2008-04-16 00:59:58

Honestly, I wasn't looking for help or wisdom from the devs or users here. Indeed, I was simply trying to bring attention to an issue with the integration of TeXLive into Archlinux; and I just wanted to get an answer as to whether or not this issue was ever going to be addressed. I've gotten my answer, and I am going to leave it at that.

skottish · 2008-04-16 06:33:16

This has been a really great thread. From this site:

http://www.tug.org/tetex/

Thomas Esser wrote:

I (Thomas Esser) have decided not to make new releases of teTeX any more (May 2006). The information below might get out of date as time goes by. I suggest anybody interested in teTeX to join the TeX Live project.

PDExperiment626 came in with a very well thought out and articulated set of questions about the future of TeX Live within Arch (and in consequence LaTeX). tomk responded at an equal level from a Arch developer's standpoint. Of course many of the posts in this discussion have maintained the same quality.

All of teTex has been folded into TeX Live. As well as XeTex. And...

tomk's suggestion, that has been reiterated within this thread, may be a useful solution. Bring in everyone that wants to contribute to an Arch centric TeX Live package set similar to KDEMod in its intent and desire for high quality packages. firmicus has done amazing work with TeX Live so far. Why not shape it into all it can be for Arch?

ConnorBehan · 2008-04-16 12:08:02

bender02 wrote:

Just to clarify: tetex is unmaintaned, by it is by no means obsolete.
As far as binaries go: *the tex language* itself was frozen in 1989 by its author, Donald Knuth. The only things that evolve are some of its extensions, most notably pdftex. Moreover, the only visible difference I was able to track down since pdftex shipped with tetex to now is that when you include certain types of pictures (some jpg's or png's or pdf's), they render a bit better in the new one than in the old one. With the new tl2008 should come luatex, ok, but that's still a new stuff and people using it definitely know about texlive/tetex difference.
So for instance, for pidgin-latex it makes *no difference* whether you have tetex or texlive installed.

Fair enough... I don't mean to say tetex hindered by ability to annoy people with formulas in Pidgin, I just mean that once I actually started using TeX for other stuff (and searching the forums and the wiki for the word "tex" for some reference) I found out that tetex was unmaintained and I never knew that before. Thanks for telling me exactly which features texlive has that tetex doesn't. I never realized it was only those two.

Ok so tetex is still a great package and it won't kill anyone to use tetex for a few years while the texlive situation is still being sorted out. But there are plenty of packages where using a slightly outdated version would be fine. I have always loved how up to date Arch is. When a new package gets released upstream, I almost always see my Arch version of it update within 3 days, and the Arch devs fixed the local root explot: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=43707 faster than any other distro I know. The decision to set it up so that more people use an unmaintained version of TeX than the bleeding edge one is certainly alright, but it is breaking the pattern so it should not be made hastily.

Stefan Husmann · 2008-04-16 12:46:08

attila wrote:

At the end my private view about texlive/tetex: Still again i like tetex more than texlive because at the moment i don't have the feeling that the devs of texlive have any plan that their work will be better integrate in a package system of a linux distribution but that is why i think Firmicus makes a heroic job.

The TeXlive devs do a heroic job also, but it is not their plan to do an integration into any Linux distributions package system.
TeXlive is meant to support very many platforms, including Windows, MacOS, HP-UX, Solaris, any BSDs, and Linux. So it cannot be their task to support package managers, this has to be done by the distro's maintainers, and in case of Arch: by us.

This was also the case with teTeX. Thomas Esser never made packages himself afaik.

attila · 2008-04-16 13:37:28

@Stefan I don't mean that the texlive devs have to write a PKGBUILD or a texlive.spec but the big difference is that with tetex i can play the "./configure && make all && make prefix=INSTALLDIR install" game and texlive itself offers only a windows like setup on dvd. For me the second way is not the method which i want to install a piece of software and i can't understand why the texlive devs don't offer Makefiles in the same way as tetex.

On the other hand you be right that the texlive devs do a heroic job too because if you look at ctan than the most packages exists there as source with less or more information where i have to put this files. It is a little bit waste of time that thousands of people have to find out where they have to put files and it makes TeX from my view in this moment under Linux more complicated than TeX at itself is and should.

At example miktex seems to have an updater but this is again the windows method to overwrite files in better version than only to run a setup but without the easy possibilty to integrate it in a package management. Should this be the future of the installation of TeX that we all will end with a setup whereas the used platform have a excellent package management? I hope not but i don't know it.

bender02 · 2008-04-16 14:13:58

@attila: You need to keep in mind that the goal of texlive was not (is not?) to create a "tex distribution" which would be easily installed, but a "live cd" (I guess already dvd now) (tex*live*), so that you can run stuff off of a cd directly. An option to essentially copy over the cd to the hard drive and use it from there was only added on demand of users. In the early stages, the "install" was really just "copy the whole cd to the drive". Since then, their live installer improved quite a bit, but of course not to the extent that would make linux packaging a piece of cake.

@migration to texlive: It seems to me that all that needs to be done/decided by devs is to move these editors+ (lyx,texmacs,kile,latex2html) to community, together with tetex, and let some TU's (firmicus?) with the help of TeX users to replace the dependencies of those from tetex to texlive.
Parallelly, interested TeX users should discuss with Firmicus about the ways to help him out.

Stefan Husmann · 2008-04-16 14:34:01

attila wrote:

@Stefan I don't mean that the texlive devs have to write a PKGBUILD or a texlive.spec but the big difference is that with tetex i can play the "./configure && make all && make prefix=INSTALLDIR install" game and texlive itself offers only a windows like setup on dvd. For me the second way is not the method which i want to install a piece of software and i can't understand why the texlive devs don't offer Makefiles in the same way as tetex.

Well I was able to do such an ./configure&& make all && make prefix=INSTALLDIR install with TeXLive under Intel-Solaris some time ago. Its should be possible. TeXLive gives this possibility for the platforms they do not provide binaries for. It is the question, if this is really needed, because the 386-binaries are IMHO fast enough for i686, and x86_64 is natively supported.

(from http://www.tug.org/texlive/doc.html, boldness by me)
* alpha-linux (HP Alpha GNU/Linux)
* hppa-hpux (HP-UX)
* i386-darwin (x86 MacOSX)
* i386-freebsd (x86 FreeBSD)
* i386-linux (x86 GNU/Linux)
* i386-openbsd (x86 OpenBSD)
* i386-solaris (x86 Solaris)
* mips-irix (SGI IRIX)
* powerpc-aix (IBM RS/6000 AIX)
* powerpc-darwin (PowerPC MacOSX; bash.dmg available for bootstrap)
* powerpc-linux (PowerPC GNU/Linux)
* sparc-linux (Sparc GNU/Linux)
* sparc-solaris (Sun Sparc Solaris)
* win32 (32-bit Windows, i.e., 9X and later)
* x86_64-linux (x86 64-bit GNU/Linux)

attila · 2008-04-16 18:52:07

@bender02 For me it does not matter that texlive is been for a live cd because now at the moment texlive replaces tetex because it is unmaintained and so it would be fine to have a easier way to create packages.

@Stefan Thanks for the url but sorry i don't find any informations on it where i can download the sources to create packages as at example we have them now in community and how i can play this normal configure/make game.

It is easy possible that i'm wrong about this all but at the moment i suspect that the way how Firmicus creates the packages is the only way and this way is very hard. So let us step back to think positive (which includes at first myself ) and support Firmicus on his way.

My personal great dream will be a core tex package in combination with that files from ctan can be downloaded and packaged i an easy way by everybody without searching hours to understand the organization of the file structure. But this is not the reality and i can accept that but i don't have to wish it or to be satisfied with this.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-04-15 13:32:52

What is the plan with TeXLive?

#2 2008-04-15 13:37:07

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#3 2008-04-15 14:12:53

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#4 2008-04-15 14:27:51

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#5 2008-04-15 15:10:56

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#6 2008-04-15 16:37:44

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#7 2008-04-15 17:41:18

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#8 2008-04-15 19:10:40

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#9 2008-04-15 19:32:47

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#10 2008-04-15 19:41:30

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#11 2008-04-15 19:59:19

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#12 2008-04-15 20:18:07

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#13 2008-04-15 20:27:16

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#14 2008-04-15 21:40:39

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#15 2008-04-15 21:47:50

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#16 2008-04-15 22:09:22

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#17 2008-04-15 23:45:15

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#18 2008-04-16 00:59:58

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#19 2008-04-16 06:33:16

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#20 2008-04-16 12:08:02

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#21 2008-04-16 12:46:08

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#22 2008-04-16 13:37:28

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#23 2008-04-16 14:13:58

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#24 2008-04-16 14:34:01

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

#25 2008-04-16 18:52:07

Re: What is the plan with TeXLive?

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