Nikola Lečić <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
ni> On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 07:43:00 ni> Doug Barton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ni> ni> > On Fri, 14 Dec 2007, Nikola Lečić wrote: ni> [...] ni> > > I must add that I tried two times to contact two FreeBSD developers ni> > > who ni> > > (according to the public sources) seemed to be interested in this; ni> > > never got a single word of reply. Having in mind that I offered a ni> > > help, some experience and maintaining/testing availability, I can't ni> > > understand this. It's very discouraging. ni> > ni> > please feel free to take that as a sign that you should take the ball ni> > and run with it. :) ni> ni> Well, according to ni> ni> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2007-May/040511.html ni> ni> porting of TeXLive has already been undertaken. :-) The problem is ni> that it's not possible to get any further information on this work. ni> ni> But anyway, I don't think I can do it alone, of course. I could ni> probably create port(s), but the biggest challenge is that so many ni> other ports depend on teTeX, and re-configuring all dependencies ni> obviously requires huge experience, computer horsepower and ni> developers' hands. Therefore a help was offered and sharing future ni> maintaining load as well: ni> ni> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2007-July/042729.html ni> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2007-August/043453.html ni> ni> So, once again: ni> ni> * If any FreeBSD developer is currently working on TeXLive port, ni> please, can we users know something about it? ni> * If not, is any FreeBSD developer willing to lead that project, ni> publicly discuss port's infrastructure/concept, and then give us ni> (who are happy to help :-)) some tasks? ni> * Or some user should start porting (and discuss infrastructure ni> first?) and then developers will jump in? I have tried to create TeXLive port and have some working results, but I cannot commit it because the following issues still remain: 1. Compatibility with other packages which uses TeX. Some depend on old teTeX structure, some depend on hard-coded directory structure, and so on. teTeX in the current ports tree has various glues for such software which are not integrated into teTeX yet. 2. Finer-grained package management is needed. Creating a TeXLive port as "one very large package" is possible but I do not think it would work well. There are many people who do not want to install such a large package (TeXLive needs >500MB disk space) for a simple use, and who can install it but want to update some specific macro packages after that. Also, I want to solve a situation that we have print/tex and print/teTeX separately. Actually, 1. has been almost solved by adding similar hacks, but 2. is still a moot point. My first prototype consisted of two or three ports based on the "large package" model like the current teTeX, but I noticed it was too large and difficult to commit. Another prototype is based on finer-grained packages---it has ports/tex for TeX related ports. The number of packages which extracted from TeXLive distribution and created as ports is 1232 (in my local tree). And then I created meta-ports that installs predefined package sets called "core", "basic", "latex", and "full" for example. "core" means Plain TeX + METAFONT + some DVIware, "latex" means LaTeX macro set, "basic" means core+latex, and "full" includes all other packages (this can be broken down more finely). And ports that use TeX needs a line like "USE_TEX=basic" in the Makefile as GNOME-related ports do. I think this is the way we have to pursue on a long-term basis. In short, modularization of TeXLive distribution is needed for such a way. At first I thought it is not difficult because package management information was included in the TeXLive distribution (in XML), but I noticed that it was totally broken. So I am in the middle of fixing the information. This is a progress report from the current teTeX maintainer who is trying to update TeX in the ports tree to TeXLive. As I explained, if we go with the finer-grained package model, over 1000 ports have to be added at a time, so testing them should be done in a separate tree at least. I hope I will be able to set up a public tree for testing and collaborative work this month... Any comments are welcome. Thanks. -- | Hiroki SATO
pgpDspG6LGCAj.pgp
Description: PGP signature
