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

[José Matos]

On 09/18/2011 02:20 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
> 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
>

Do not forget that other than texlive you have specialized installer for
python, ruby, perl, lua, R (you name it).

Should we leave the job to those packagers?

Personally I prefer the rpm packages since it easier to have a single
place to administer all my machines instead of running all those
installers after installation. IMHO this one area where linux excels
when compared with the other alternatives.

My 2 ¢ (euro cents).

-- 
José Matos