Subject: Re: Shed light on Tetex packages
From: Jan Nieuwenhuizen <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 14:22:14 +0200

"Schaible, Jörg" <[email-masked]> writes:

> looking at the currently available Tetex packages I wonder whether
> it is really good to follow the "install everything" method, since
> they seem to be not disjuctive.

That's right, but there should be not much harm.  See below.

> Reading the announcement in
> http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin-announce/2002-08/msg00007.html I
> seem to have following options:
>
> Install either
> - tetex-bin, tetex-base and libkpathsea3
> or
> - tetex-tiny

No.  Apparently my message was not as clear as I thought it was.  You
always need tetex-bin and libkpathsea3.  In addition, you need a texmf
tree.  You can get one by installing tetex-tiny or tetex-base.
It doesn't matter too much, as this is taken care of automagically by
dependencies.

> You might also install optionally:
> - tetex-doc
> - tetex-extra
> - tetex-devel
> - tetex-x11

Yes.  The reason for this is that tetex is very big (have you looked
at the sizes of the packages?)  About every distribution of tetex
offers packaging in multiple parts.

> And you have an install helper:
> - tetex

Yes.  You want tetex, simply select the 'tetex' package: and done.

> Additionally there are "upgrade helpers":
> - texmf-*
> - tetex-beta

Yes, this is where it gets hairy.  As you may have noticed, I have
asked to remove these.  These packages took care of a smooth upgrade
from the previous tetex packaging to the new one.

> I did not found any doc, readme or FAQ that explains exactly the
> dependency of all these packages.

For users it should 'just work'.  For developers: use the source,
dependencies are listed in the setup.hint files.

> Looking at the behaviour of setup
> the dependecies become clearer, but not anything is obvious. For a
> new installation of Cygwin I assume that - none of the texmf-* or
> the tetex-beta packages should be chosen - either tetex-base or
> tetex-tiny should be chosen, tetex-bin and libkpathsea3 are selected
> automatically

Correct.

> - tetex-extra is only optional if tetex-base was chosen - tetex-x11
> is only optional if tetex-tiny was chosen - tetex-doc and
> tetex-devel are optional independent of the "basic" choice - whats
> package "tetex" for? It seems again incompatible with the tetex-base
> choice.

I don't understand this.

Anyway: tetex-tiny overlaps with tetex-base (and possibly
tetex-extra).  Ideally, this should be handled by alternative
'requires:' and 'conflicts:', but setup.exe doesn't do that, yet.

The trick is that only the selection of files in the packages is
changed, the files themselves are indentical.  Configuration issues
are taken care of during postinstall.  The only thing you should not
do, is install both, and then remove one of them.  If you want to do
that, you should re-install the remaining package (tetex-base or
tetex-tiny).

Maybe tetex-tiny should simply be removed until setup can handle this,
and we should simple force the 15MB download upon everyone who uses
tex?  I was trying to be low-bandwith friendly.

> It is not clear, what happens if I "accidently" activate tetex-base
> *and* tetex-tiny.

You should be fine.

> Even worse, it seems that uninstalling tetex-tiny will destroy also
> tetex-base and vice versa.

Yes, that's true.  Don't do that.

> It would be fine if one could read at least in the FAQ about the
> possible choices and its consequences.

I'll add this note to the announce message, and include it in the
README for the next release:

    NOTE: The tetex-tiny and tetex-base packages overlap.  If you
          choose for a full tetex installation (or just install
          everything), both will be installed, which should be fine.
          Please don't uninstall one of them, there should be no need
          to do so.  If you do, you must reinstall the other.

Greetings,
Jan.

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <[email-masked]> | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien       | http://www.lilypond.org

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Bug reporting:         http://cygwin.com/bugs.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/