

Re: texlive-basic_2005-1_i386.changes REJECTED

Peter Samuelson <peter@p12n.org> wrote:

> [Frank Küster]
>> > Why do we need two packages containing the "latex" command, for example?
>> Why do we need N packages that provide MTA functionality?
> That's not equivalent.  An equivalent question would be more like "why
> do we need N packages all containing the source code for exim and
> building a binary called /usr/sbin/exim?"  What I mean is, AFAICT, if
> you get past the packaging, tetex and texlive are the *same* source
> code and the *same* data - not just two different implementations of a
> similar interface.

The source of teTeX is a *subset* of TeXLive's source, modulo versions.

It will serve our users to be able to install, as a Debian package, the
parts of TeXLive that are not included in teTeX.  

It would not do our users any good if we dropped teTeX right now and
switched everything to TeXLive (especially Debian developers would be
quite angry about the numerous FTBFS bugs, and "nonresponsive"
maintainers who are overworked).  I also think that teTeX is a long-term
alternative (e.g. for people who want a reasonably sized, reasonably
recent TeX system without thinking much about details, or for buildds).  

Alternatives would be to package all those extra things separately -
unnecessary work, since the TeXLive developers already have done most of
it; or to add it to teTeX Debian-specificly - this is simply not
feasible, and would deteriorate teTeX's quality much (and also the
quality of our maintenance and responsiveness).

Becaues of the internal dependencies of a TeX system, it is not trivial
to take out the things from TeXLive that are already in teTeX, and only
package the rest.  We will try to move things into this direction, but
the way to go is to have a self-containing, working TeXLive system
first, and then make it possible to use parts of it together with teTeX,
step by step.

Even then I think it would be better for our users to have both systems
available as a whole, at the very least because of the (I hope
hypothetical) concern that teTeX depends on a single person (Thomas
Esser, the te in the name) and therefore might suffer from hypothetical
personal problems in the future.

> So I would dearly hope that eventually tetex would evolve into little
> more than a set of metapackages that suck in stuff from texlive. 

That would mean dropping teTeX, and the metapackages would rather be
transitional packages.

> Or do the existing tetex packages actually provide anything that could
> not be provided that way?

Yes, they do:  teTeX-3.0 had a public testing phase of about a year,
while TeXLive is released yearly.

> I'm in favor of texlive being included in debian unstable (assuming
> license issues can be worked out), but I am not particularly in favor
> of having texlive and tetex coexist indefinitely.  tetex is heavy
> enough that it should have to justify its continued existence (I mean
> as more than just a way to "get all useful bits of TeX by listing just
> one package dependency") if texlive provides the same thing.

I do agree with you here.  Right now the justification for teTeX's
existence simply is that it is established within Debian, and works.  It
might be that once the same is true for TeXLive, we find there's no
justification left - or rather that there is one.  Let's see.

Regards, Frank
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer

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