Thoughtful updates to TexLive

Thoughtful updates to TexLive

[Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hi,

Should updates to TexLive or its prerequisites fall under the
core-updates policy (or whatever its successor is)?

My Guix is heavily modified and building TexLive takes an hour and a
half.  Grafting it takes nearly as long.  Thanks!

Kind regards
Felix

Re: Thoughtful updates to TexLive

[Nicolas Goaziou via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hello,

Felix Lechner writes:

> Should updates to TexLive or its prerequisites fall under the
> core-updates policy (or whatever its successor is)?
>
> My Guix is heavily modified and building TexLive takes an hour and a
> half.  Grafting it takes nearly as long.  Thanks!

What TexLive are you talking about? There are two TeX Live distributions
in Guix: the monolithic one, i.e., `texlive', and the modular one, i.e.,
the set of all `texlive-*' packages.

Monolithic TeX Live is not substitutable so no matter how heavily
modified your Guix is, you will always rebuild it at every dependency
change.

My suggestion is to use modular TeX Live with a reasonable set of
packages. I.e., you certainly don't need to pull `texlive-scheme-full',
the modular counterpart of `texlive'.


Regards,
-- 
Nicolas Goaziou

Re: Thoughtful updates to TexLive

[Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hi Nicolas,

On Sat, Oct 26 2024, Nicolas Goaziou via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." wrote:

> What TexLive are you talking about?

I am talking about 'texlivetexmf-20240312'.

While I'm lucky that there is a substitute, I can hardly use it.  At
3.95GB and 31 kB/sec download speed, it took twenty minutes to reach 1%.

If my math is right, two thousand minutes are about thirty-three hours.

What is the rationale for the monolithic package, please?  I'm not using
it in any of my own stuff, I don't think.  Thanks!

Kind regards
Felix

Re: Thoughtful updates to TexLive

[Nicolas Goaziou via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hello,

Felix Lechner via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System
distribution." <guix-devel@gnu.org> writes:

> I am talking about 'texlivetexmf-20240312'.
>
> While I'm lucky that there is a substitute, I can hardly use it.

The `texlivetexmf' package has a `#:substitutable #f' flag. Unless I’m
mistaken, you’re probably downloading its source before building it.

> What is the rationale for the monolithic package, please?  I'm not using
> it in any of my own stuff, I don't think.  Thanks!

The monolithic package predates the modular one. Back in the days, it
was the only way to get a proper TeX Live experience within Guix.

It is not the case anymore. However, Andreas Enge (Cc’ed) prefers to
keep it as a no-brainer for anyone who wants to compile TeX documents
and can afford the download cost. I’d love to get feedback about the
comparison between using `texlive' and `texlive-scheme-full', as
I believe the latter can satisfy that user profile.

Admittedly, another advantage is that you can modify `texlive' without
rebuilding world.

As you put it, you, or anyone on this earth I bet, don’t need every
package in there. Some are provided for historical purpose only, for
example. Even if you don’t want to fiddle with TeX Live packages,
installing a couple of `texlive-collection-*' packages, such as the
massive `texlive-collection-latexextra', will be more manageable in the
long run.

Regards,
-- 
Nicolas Goaziou