From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ricardo Wurmus Subject: bug#27217: texlive is too big Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2017 21:03:49 +0200 Message-ID: <87tw3w7v1m.fsf@elephly.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:49961) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dHEME-0006lP-QP for bug-guix@gnu.org; Sat, 03 Jun 2017 15:05:07 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dHEMA-0003Ru-Kk for bug-guix@gnu.org; Sat, 03 Jun 2017 15:05:06 -0400 Received: from debbugs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.43]:51460) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dHEMA-0003Rq-HN for bug-guix@gnu.org; Sat, 03 Jun 2017 15:05:02 -0400 Received: from Debian-debbugs by debbugs.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1dHEMA-0003th-7q for bug-guix@gnu.org; Sat, 03 Jun 2017 15:05:02 -0400 Sender: "Debbugs-submit" Resent-Message-ID: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:49864) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dHEL9-0006jR-7p for bug-guix@gnu.org; Sat, 03 Jun 2017 15:04:00 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dHEL6-0002Je-5F for bug-guix@gnu.org; Sat, 03 Jun 2017 15:03:59 -0400 Received: from sender-of-o51.zoho.com ([135.84.80.216]:21080) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dHEL5-0002Hi-SB for bug-guix@gnu.org; Sat, 03 Jun 2017 15:03:56 -0400 List-Id: Bug reports for GNU Guix List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: bug-guix-bounces+gcggb-bug-guix=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "bug-Guix" To: 27217@debbugs.gnu.org Currently, we offer the complete texlive distribution in a single package that weighs several gigabytes. This causes several problems: * it’s much too heavy a dependency for packages * it takes a long time to download * it takes a long time to compress the substitute * a user who only wants to compile a simple PDF needs to put up with installing the complete texlive distribution. The purpose of this bug report is to keep track of the remaining issues in splitting up texlive. This is the current status (in my local branch): * we have a texlive importer that fetches description and version info from CTAN but downloads from the texlive SVN. This is because CTAN does not store versioned tarballs. * we have a new texlive-build-system that can compile TeX packages in “.ins” + “.dtx” format * the build system works fine for creating individual packages for the LaTeX required package set. * these packages are sufficient to build the documentation of the package “fastcap” in DVI and PDF format What’s missing? Currently, one needs to set a lot of environment variables to use these separate packages. For “fastcap” I needed to set “DVIPSHEADERS” (to find “tex.pro”), “TFMFONTS” (for compiled metafont files), “TEXFORMATS” (for the compiled “latex.fmt”), and “TEXINPUTS” (for all directories containing tex source files). Setting these variables manually is really tedious. How can we set them automatically? A simple idea is to provide a procedure “texlive-union” that takes texlive packages and produces a wrapped variant of the tools in “texlive-bin” that run inside an environment where these variables are set. It is also not clear how users should install texlive from countless separate packages. We should provide different sets of packages for variants like texlive-minimal up to texlive-most. We may also want to support installation of individual packages by providing a profile hook (e.g. when a user only wants texlive-minimal with the gbrief package). -- Ricardo GPG: BCA6 89B6 3655 3801 C3C6 2150 197A 5888 235F ACAC https://elephly.net