X-Recipient: archive-cygwin@delorie.com X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.3 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,KHOP_THREADED,T_RP_MATCHES_RCVD X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org From: Adam Dinwoodie To: "cygwin@cygwin.com" Subject: RE: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 09:14:14 +0000 Deferred-Delivery: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 09:14:00 +0000 Message-ID: References: <50185716.8050504@cornell.edu> <50191B67.5010106@cs.utoronto.ca> <50192B7B.5060501@cornell.edu> <50193AA8.8050307@cs.utoronto.ca> <50197B86.9060308@cornell.edu> In-Reply-To: <50197B86.9060308@cornell.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id q729GcMl013288 Ken Brown wrote: >On 8/1/2012 10:18 AM, Ryan Johnson wrote: >> It can be argued that emacs-auctex should not pull in texlive. Most >> users installing emacs-auctex will already have some flavor of tex in >> place, and not necessarily the cygwin one (like the OP, or perhaps a >> MikTex user). Plus, the error message is pretty intuitive and the >> solution very simple, if latex is not there: "latex: no such command" >> ==> "maybe I should install latex." Therefore, the expected aggregate > >There's more to it than that. emacs-auctex installs stuff needed for >its preview feature in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/preview/. This won't >be found by native texlive or by MikTeX. > >> frustration of users who installed auctex without latex available would >> likely be far lower than the aggregate frustration of users wanting to >> install auctex and getting saddled with an unwanted redundant texlive >> distribution (for which there is no easy solution). > >Why is this so frustrating? It doesn't do any harm (except waste a >small amount of disk space) to install Cygwin's texlive in parallel with >native texlive. Just make sure the bin directory of the latter precedes >/usr/bin in PATH. I myself have both installed, since I sometimes find >it useful for testing purposes to be able to switch from one to the >other (by temporarily changing PATH). I'd draw a parallel between the emacs-auctex's dependency on latex and libX11's dependency on xorg-server: while xorg-server is certainly the preferred X server for Cygwin, it's not the only option[0]. [0]: http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2012-02/msg00602.html I've no particular preference for whether one package includes another that is a "soft" dependency, but I do think it's important to maintain consistency. Either dependencies where some users are likely to want to use non-Cygwin tools should be installed regardless, or they should not, and that should be applied across the board. Inconsistency harms least astonishment, and harming least astonishment makes me very sad. -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple