Features/TeXLive

TeX Live 2012

Summary

Upgrade TeX Live to at least 2012. Use packaging based on upstream metadata and don't use monolithic build any more.

Owner

• Name: Jindrich Novy jnovy at redhat dot com

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 18
• Last updated: 2013-04-12
• Percentage of completion: 100%

Detailed Description

TeX Live uses uses its own classification of TeX packages which can be automated and used by packaging systems in various distributions. The packaging metadata that upstream provides allows to distinguish doc, source and runtime files which could then be packaged separately.

Benefit to Fedora

A better packaging scheme allows to reduce bandwidth and save significant disc space. The centralized packaging (i.e. everything is generated and built form single SRPM) also allows simpler maintenance than having several thousands separate TeX packages.

To simplify the situation of installing hundreds of packages for end users, TeX Live consists of:

1) schemes (texlive-scheme-*) packages 2) collections (texlive-collection-*) packages

both of these are just metapackages (designed by TeX Live's upstream) to let user decide to install a particular size of installtion or functionality, e.g.: texlive-scheme-medium, texlive-scheme-tetex, etc. These package sets do overlap. Schemes are used for users which don't understand much of TeX but wants a particular type of deployment.

The collections are more fine-grained schemes for people who understand TeX a bit and demands some of its feature, e.g.: texlive-collection-publishers, texlive-collection-langitalian, etc. there are currently 83 such collections present in texlive. As of 12. April these collections are available:

texlive-collection-basic
texlive-collection-bibtexextra
texlive-collection-binextra
texlive-collection-context
texlive-collection-documentation-arabic
texlive-collection-documentation-base
texlive-collection-documentation-bulgarian
texlive-collection-documentation-chinese
texlive-collection-documentation-czechslovak
texlive-collection-documentation-dutch
texlive-collection-documentation-english
texlive-collection-documentation-finnish
texlive-collection-documentation-french
texlive-collection-documentation-german
texlive-collection-documentation-italian
texlive-collection-documentation-japanese
texlive-collection-documentation-korean
texlive-collection-documentation-mongolian
texlive-collection-documentation-polish
texlive-collection-documentation-portuguese
texlive-collection-documentation-russian
texlive-collection-documentation-serbian
texlive-collection-documentation-slovenian
texlive-collection-documentation-spanish
texlive-collection-documentation-thai
texlive-collection-documentation-turkish
texlive-collection-documentation-ukrainian
texlive-collection-documentation-vietnamese
texlive-collection-fontsextra
texlive-collection-fontsrecommended
texlive-collection-fontutils
texlive-collection-formatsextra
texlive-collection-games
texlive-collection-genericextra
texlive-collection-genericrecommended
texlive-collection-htmlxml
texlive-collection-humanities
texlive-collection-langafrican
texlive-collection-langarabic
texlive-collection-langarmenian
texlive-collection-langcjk
texlive-collection-langcroatian
texlive-collection-langcyrillic
texlive-collection-langczechslovak
texlive-collection-langdanish
texlive-collection-langdutch
texlive-collection-langenglish
texlive-collection-langfinnish
texlive-collection-langfrench
texlive-collection-langgerman
texlive-collection-langgreek
texlive-collection-langhebrew
texlive-collection-langhungarian
texlive-collection-langindic
texlive-collection-langitalian
texlive-collection-langlatin
texlive-collection-langlatvian
texlive-collection-langlithuanian
texlive-collection-langmongolian
texlive-collection-langnorwegian
texlive-collection-langother
texlive-collection-langpolish
texlive-collection-langportuguese
texlive-collection-langspanish
texlive-collection-langswedish
texlive-collection-langtibetan
texlive-collection-langturkmen
texlive-collection-langvietnamese
texlive-collection-latexextra
texlive-collection-latexrecommended
texlive-collection-latex
texlive-collection-luatex
texlive-collection-mathextra
texlive-collection-metapost
texlive-collection-music
texlive-collection-omega
texlive-collection-pictures
texlive-collection-plainextra
texlive-collection-pstricks
texlive-collection-publishers
texlive-collection-science
texlive-collection-texinfo
texlive-collection-xetex

Scope

Requires packaging or testing and/or enhancements in fedora infrastructure.

How To Test

TeX Live 2012

Fedora 18 and newer: TeX Live is part of mainline distribution. No special setup needed.

The following is valid for Fedora 17:

# yum remove tex-* texlive-*
# cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/texlive.repo <<EOF
[texlive]
name=texlive
baseurl=http://jnovy.fedorapeople.org/texlive/2012/packages.f17/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
EOF
# yum update; yum install texlive

The package contains repo file for yum which contains TeX Live with binaries. After installing the release package do:

# yum clean all
# yum install texlive

if you don't have texlive already installed. Otherwise you can update your old TeX Live 2007 installation like:

# yum clean all
# yum update

This will install the basic TeX Live scheme.

User Experience

Users could use exactly the part of TeX they need without wasting disc space.

Dependencies

1. need to do a license audit - DONE
2. need mass review for all packages before this feature is completed - DONE
3. import of all of the ~1600 packages need to be finished
4. all of the packages need to be built

Contingency Plan

Stay stuck with TeX Live 2007.

Documentation

TODO

Release Notes

TeX Live 2012 is now introduced with improved packaging scheme that saves download bandwidth and disc size. It is based on upstream packaging metadata and an automated license audit is performed. Packages are now composed from schemes and collections to define a package set user needs to install to use a particular TeX Live feature.

TeX Live release notes

Comments and Discussion

• This feature has its own mailing list: [1]. Feel free to subscribe and post to this list.

• See Talk:Features/TeXLive

• See Talk:Features/TeXLiveLegalAudit As of Aug 30, 2012, there are no known legal issues remaining in TexLive2012.

Ru TexLive 2009