Re: Adding kerTeX; but needs avoiding configure etc.

[tlaronde%polynum.com@localhost]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 07:55:37AM -0600, Brook Milligan wrote:
> 
> > On Aug 24, 2019, at 6:30 AM, Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost> wrote:
> > 
> > tlaronde%polynum.com@localhost writes:
> > 
> >  BTW, since there is a TeXlive discussion going on, kerTeX solves
> >  the problem at a different level: kerTeX is a hosted system; TeX
> >  related packages are its problem not the problem of the host. There
> >  is a packaging system for kerTeX allowing to add LaTeX and etc. to
> >  the core, "kernel" system (hence the name with a word play between
> >  ker(nel) and "care"). So there is only one (in fact two for
> >  cross-compilation) package for TeX the additions being handled by the
> >  TeX hosted system.
> > 
> > This is not the pkgsrc way
> 
> More strongly, not only is this not the pkgsrc way, but mixing the kerTeX packaging system with pkgsrc as a user interface is a major step backward.

There is no mixing. It is totally independent. Totally orthogonal. And
you speak about the ease of updating and administration. But this is
what kerTeX does offer: cross-compilation; unprivileged install and,
furthermore, exactly the same user interface for administration of
packages on whatever machine and whatever OS.

You are speaking about updating a node. But this is not general. For a
fair amount of packages, cross-compilation is not available and is
definitively not available for something else than NetBSD. The kerTeX
solution is general: the same commands will run exactly the same on
whatever machine/OS kerTeX runs on.

There are 2000 TeX related packages. Having the "obligation" to create
2000 * n packages wrappers for n distinct package managements is not
exactly what one can call a sound administrative decision.

When I first started kerTeX because I was tired to depend on a huge
TeXlive, that was even not easily available for NetBSD (not to speak
about Plan9) and coming only on DVD size distribution, LaTeX users
told me that it was useless to create a "tex" distribution since
nobody nowadays uses tex but LaTeX, even not knowing that LaTeX is
not an engine but a (huge) set of macros that _needs_ the TeX engine
(they require e-TeX these days but e-TeX is just a patched TeX)
and not knowing that there will be no LaTeX if there was no TeX.

For the TeX related packages, what LaTeX has done is using the tex
engine to format and install, that is the packages depend only on a
latex named binary (that is a TeX or e-TeX binary called "latex" as
argv[0] simply to load a name matching "dump" that is a predigested
version, a compiled version of the macros) and this was done precisely
to be OS independent.

Creating "packages" around that _is_ the nonsense decision adding
thousands of wrappers that are never up-to-date (while indeed the
sources very seldom change) and creating an administration nightmare.

FWIW, I plan to create a pkgsrc wrapper around the kerTeX
configuration/compilation/installation framework so that more users can
install it in a way they are more accustomed to. But kerTeX doesn't
need it: it can install on everything---I even consider adding a UEFI
libc version that can be install on almost bare metal (well: UEFI, so:
firmware).

But this will be all. There will be _no_ kerTeX packages in pkgsrc
format.
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                     http://www.kergis.com/
                       http://www.sbfa.fr/
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