Re: texlive organization on netbsd

[Mayuresh <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost>]

On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 12:36:01PM -0400, Cág wrote:
> If your concern is the overall package number, then it's not a problem:
> it can be virtually infinite.

1. Virtually infinite is a technical perspective. In that also somewhere
we'll have to consider the physical resources - disk size, time for
cvs/git checkout/update etc.

2. Then there is human effort perspective as well. This is same for, say
vim plugins, firefox plugins (just to vary my examples), besides npm, pip
etc. It is too much of an effort to maintain ever growing collection.

If we have not felt so till now, let's see why:

- Potentially several pkgsrc users are using pip, npm et al. Hence there
  are no new package requests. I have used them myself several times when
  there was no pkgsrc package.

- For latex, on all major platforms binary distribution is avaiable with a
  minimal install option with a package manager. I am using that for
  several years and NetBSD users also have good contribution in keeping
  texlive binaries for NetBSD alive. [The discussion started when I needed
  it on a platform where TL binary is not available. But that apart.]

So if we have not felt the maintenance burden on pkgsrc maintainers, it's
mainly because a lot of users are using above options. [Call it a guess or
extrapolation of my own usage pattern, as I have no scientific way of
knowing how many pkgsrc users exercise above options.]

3. Third aspect is of latency when I realize I need a package. It's a
matter of a few moments if I have the platform's package manager.

> If you need something right now, build it and put it in /usr/local.

Sure, I was thinking of the same.

> There are maintainers that work specifically with TeX or Python, ask
> them or the list.

For python, thanks to pip, I may not bother them. For TeX let me see if I
can get it in /usr/local myself. Once set, it will be obviously quicker
than asking someone to add packages.

> Know what you need before installing it anyway.

Of course. But there are times, particularly in making presentations etc
where there is a bit of trial and error. Digressions like adding pkg
aren't particularly welcome in that state of one's mind (even assuming
there are tools to do so and / or maintainers are kind enough and have
time to do it swiftly).

> I stay away from Python and anything JS-related :) And we use Fortran
> where probably R can be used, so I can't really tell. As for TeX, I like
> the way it's packaged, and, like I said, if I'd need something, I'd
> simply write a Makefile. It's yet to happen though. 

Most respondents on the thread are seeing individual usage and arriving at
their view. Someone has to take a union of usage of all users and all
potential users and see whether the approach is maintainable. Also factor
in point number 2 above (about why we may not have felt the problem) with
this.

Mayuresh