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Idea #12790: TeX: Upgrade to TeX Live 2008

bug This idea is a duplicate of Idea #11449: Provide better TeX inegration/updates.
Written by Stefan Kottwitz the 4 Sep 08 at 18:04. Category: Office. Related project: Nothing/Others. Status: New
Rationale
TeX Live 2008 has been released and it would be great if it would be integrated with Ubuntu Linux soon.
One higlight is the TeX Live Manager that allows dynamic updates of packages over the internet, a feature missed for years and provided by the MiKTeX Distribution on Windows for many years already.

See:

TeX Live Homepage: http://tug.org/texlive/
Release notes: http://tug.org/texlive/doc/texlive-en/texlive-en.html#x1-7400010.2


Tags: LaTeX TeX TeXlive

45
votes
closed
Solution #1: Auto-generated solution of idea #12790
Written by Stefan Kottwitz the 4 Sep 08 at 18:04.
Ubuntu Brainstorm was updated in January 2009. Since the idea #12790 was submitted before this update, its rationale and solution are not separated. Please vote accordingly, and if you have the necessary rights, please separate the rationale from the solution. Thanks!
0
votes
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Solution #2: Stop managing a distribution within an another distribution
Written by scouix the 30 Jan 09 at 10:23.

It's now 2009 and Texlive 2008 is out since Sept 2008. The update process seems very long...
Maybe the solution is to manage texlive and updates of texlive outside dpkg. Texlive 2008 provides this kind of functionnality with tlmgr. It's seems like MikTeX package manager which is very powerful.
0
votes
closed
Solution #3: Use MikTeX Package Manager
Written by Drebon the 8 Aug 09 at 10:12.
Miktex Package Manager (MPM) has been ported to unix-like system. You can tell it on what texmf-tree to work.

It serves an alternative for latex and every command like this that enable them to use mpm to download packages on the fly.

MPM could be a solution to achieve a good flexibiltiy while preserving the apt packaging integrity

Propose your solution

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Comments
Eldmannen wrote on the 5 Sep 08 at 00:37
+1

This software is used by researchers, scientists, students, professors, etc.

icicle wrote on the 5 Sep 08 at 08:49
I have been waiting for this TeX Live Manager for ages. Please include it into Intrepid.

nizarus wrote on the 5 Sep 08 at 12:17
+1
will be great to get the dynamic updates in Linux.
Actually for intrepid the planed version is 2007 ( https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/texlive-bin)

alex_mayorga wrote on the 5 Sep 08 at 14:33
This isn't an idea from the get go, it is a packaging request and hence should go in Launchpad if I'm not mistaken. A reading of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/NewPackages might be of interest.

Keep the ideas coming.

Klaus Warzecha wrote on the 8 Sep 08 at 06:07
+1
Tex Live 2008 will be of great value for all scientists trying to deliver decents manuscripts, oral presentations and conference posters.
With respect to the long missed tlmgr, Tex Live 2008 seemingly is a milestone release and should not be missed in Ubuntu 8.10.

ThomasArildsen wrote on the 8 Sep 08 at 07:50
I have anxiously been awaiting the TexLive manager functionality for years now. This major news. Let's get it in as soon as possible.

norbusan wrote on the 25 Nov 08 at 17:22
Some comments from me, the Debian maintainer of the TeX Live packages, and the one doing the packaging:
- first, we are far from getting TeX Live 2008 packaged, there is some work done in the svn repository, and I ask some Ubuntu devs to help a bit if they find some time.
- second, tlmgr will quite probably be not as functional as in a normal TeX Live install. It cannot bypass the APT packaging system. So tlmgr update --all will simply not work, not on Debian, not on Ubuntu, as long as you stick to the Debian/Ubuntu packages.

If you really believe that tlmgr should be able to do that, please come up with a decent proposal, but please first invest some time in studying the Debian/Ubuntu packaging system.

Well, that's it. At the current point I don't see tlmgr *at*all* in the Debian/Ubuntu packages, because it will all be done with the APT methods. Maybe a stripped down version for searching etc, but I am not convinced.

Have a nice day, and better to contribute to actual development then proposing finny ideas without background knowledge.

See you

Norbert

norbusan wrote on the 25 Nov 08 at 17:23
Some comments from me, the Debian maintainer of the TeX Live packages, and the one doing the packaging:
- first, we are far from getting TeX Live 2008 packaged, there is some work done in the svn repository, and I ask some Ubuntu devs to help a bit if they find some time.
- second, tlmgr will quite probably be not as functional as in a normal TeX Live install. It cannot bypass the APT packaging system. So tlmgr update --all will simply not work, not on Debian, not on Ubuntu, as long as you stick to the Debian/Ubuntu packages.

If you really believe that tlmgr should be able to do that, please come up with a decent proposal, but please first invest some time in studying the Debian/Ubuntu packaging system.

Well, that's it. At the current point I don't see tlmgr *at*all* in the Debian/Ubuntu packages, because it will all be done with the APT methods. Maybe a stripped down version for searching etc, but I am not convinced.

Have a nice day, and better to contribute to actual development then proposing finny ideas without background knowledge.

See you

Norbert

dmitrij.ledkov wrote on the 27 Nov 08 at 17:08
Thanks a lot norbert.

I will try to install texlive 2008 without APT and see how it will play along.

pauljohn32 wrote on the 31 Dec 08 at 20:32
I believe this is not a difficult packaging problem. Please look at the way Ubuntu packages R, which is similar to TeXLive in the sense that there are many addon packages, some of which are built by the Ubuntu distributor, but there is also the possibility that the user may manually install or update packages. In Ubuntu packaging, this is done by installing all packages that come in deb form in the /usr/lib/R path, while packages that users build on their system (as root) are put into /usr/local/lib/R and thing they build nonroot are in ~/.R or someplace like that. In the R case, there is a little patch applied against R so that user-initiated updates are put into /usr/local, and I believe same could be set in TexLive.

In TeXLive, you need to set it so that the things users install on their own are put into /usr/local/share/texmf and the config already allows that use of an additional local package repository.

I've built a lot of RPM packages and some Deb packages, and I'd agree if you said that making Deb packages is much much more complicated/difficult. But I still think it would not be prohibitively difficult.

scouix wrote on the 30 Jan 09 at 10:27
Hi everybody,

Did some try to install TexLive without APT ? Is tlmgr working ?

Thanks

HasanNoori wrote on the 17 Feb 09 at 10:12
That's Good.
Keep the ideas coming.

Drebon wrote on the 8 Aug 09 at 09:53
I do believe that tlmgr could be integrated without breaking apt packaging.

The way I see it, is to have more than one texmf tree.

The main texmf tree would be taken care of by the apt packaging system.

Then we could have either one local texmf per user, or also one secondary global texmf tree.

tlmgr then would have the hand on the local trees, and also the secondary tree, allowing it to install and uninstall packages in those trees but not in the main tree that is maintained by apt.



Then there would be a few thing to do in the post-inst and post-remove scripts for the apt packages :

post inst : before running texhash, the post-inst script should look if the tex packages contained in the apt package have been installed by tlmgr before, if so, then remove them from tlmgr so that removing the apt package would really remove it.

post-remove : hmm I had seen a thing to take care of, but it is no more in my mind.

I do not see how such a thing would badly interfere with the debian packaging system, because it would simply work on other directories.

I really do believe that the two systems can nicely cohabit on an Ubuntu/Debian system.

Drebon wrote on the 7 Nov 09 at 15:26
One can safely install texlive without APT and ten create a fake deb package that provides every depedency that texlive provides.

This works great, but then you better have to install texlive full and thus texlivemngr is a little bit useless.

Another problem of this is the replacement of tex-info that makes some post-inst scripts to terminate unexpectedly. This can be fixed by resetting the correct symlink.

I still believe Texlive 2008 could be packaged with two texmf trees, one would be managed via the linux distribution package manager and would allow to perform things like install texlive-humanities, the other would be managed with texlivemngr and would allow atomic tex package managing.

The only thing to do, is to check via a pre-inst script if atomics packages installed in the texlivemngr tree are going to be installed, if so, ask wether to remove them from that tree or not.


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