[Fedora TeX Live] Idea for Further Improving TeX Live on Fedora

[Michael Smith]

All,

Recently the following idea was suggested on the Fedora Forum. To quote:

"Am I the only one who thinks this is the wrong way to package TeX Live
for Fedora? There are about a zillion packages there. Instead of making
individual Fedora packages for each TeX Live package (which is a ton of
work), I think it makes much more sense to make one "core" Fedora
package for TeX Live that includes tlmgr, which users can then use for
installing additional packages beyond the core functionality and for
updates. After all, tlmgr is one of the big selling points of TeX Live;
no longer is it necessary to track down updates yourself, tlmgr does it
for you. And tlmgr is a much better and efficient way of updating TeX
Live packages than yum, which depends on Fedora packagers updating all
the individual packages. There are even times when you may want to keep
using an old package, and tlmgr can let you do that, whereas you'd be
forced into an update with yum. I just think for TeX Live it's better to
put the onus on the user to update (through tlmgr) packages they want
updated."

Maybe this was discussed before on this list. Just in case it wasn't
discussed, I'm copying this idea to this list to draw your attention to
it. Maybe it is useful for further improving TeX Live on Fedora.

Michael