[RFC] Packaging texlive

[Ken Brown]

On 2/27/2012 5:51 AM, Yaakov (Cygwin/X) wrote:
> On Sun, 2012-02-26 at 18:10 -0500, Ken Brown wrote:
>> I'm thinking about volunteering to package texlive for Cygwin.  It's
>> present in many (if not all) major Linux distros, and it could replace
>> the obsolete tetex package if the tetex maintainer doesn't object.
>
> tetex is obsolete and needs to be replaced by TeX Live, no question.
> Jan, I presume you won't mind if we relieve you of this cruft?
>
> TeX Live also replaces psutils, listed as maintained by Daniel
> Boesswetter.  AFACIS he hasn't posted to these lists since November
> 2003, so I think it's fair to say that it's been orphaned.
>
>> Since Yaakov has already packaged texlive for Cygwin Ports, the obvious
>> question is whether he is planning to move it to the Cygwin distro.  If
>> so, I would yield to him.  If not, the main obstacle I see is that
>> texlive requires some packages (such as libpoppler, among others) that
>> are in Ports but not in Cygwin.
>
> AFAICS the dependencies not yet in the distro are:
>
> dialog
> openjpeg (as dep of poppler)
> poppler (*)
> python-imaging (aka PIL, for asymptote)
> zziplib
>
> (*) poppler partially replaces xpdf, so this would require coordination
> with Dr. Volker Zell.
>
> I'll ITP those and work with Volker on trimming xpdf.
>
>> So the first question is whether it's feasible to move those packages to
>> the Cygwin distro in the near future.  Yaakov, WDYT?
>
> If you are interested and prepared to take this on, I'd be happy to work
> with you to make this happen.  First I suggest you review the brand-new
> texlive cygclass and my .cygport files in Ports git:

I had already done that before sending my message.  I've actually been 
thinking for a couple years that I'd like to package texlive, but I 
didn't have the nerve to try until I saw your work in Ports.  Thanks!

> Once we're ready, I can handle moving over the texlive packages, take
> care of all the obsoletes, and adjust existing package dependencies,
> then handoff to you for future maintenance.

Sounds like a good plan.

Ken