Re: Installing ConTeXt under Unix

[Tobias Burnus <burnus@berlin1.netsurf.de>]

> Hai All,
Haai everybody, hallo Berend,

> Here my first version of installing ConTeXt under Unix. Let me know what you thing of it.
Let's go on commenting: 

> *************************START*************************
> Step 1: do you have web2c?

You don't need a web2c based TeX distribution, but if you
don't want to re-compile the source you should have 
web2c 7.2 (7.1 should work as well).
Using teTeX 0.4 you are out of luck (teTeX 0.4 is based on
Web2c 7.0). (have a look at the PPCHTeX-FAQ for recompiling teTeX 0.4)

I personally recommend teTeX 0.9 (since one year a beta version,
but quite stable); Available at:
ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-hannover.de/home/te/private/.0.9/

Since teTeX 0.9 also has a texmf.cnf file (in my case in /usr/lib/teTeX)
is this not a reliable way to tell whether the next will work.
Try to run tex instead, it will show the version.

> Step 4: unpack your context distribution
> 
> But where? Assuming you have the TDS, my main TeX directory is in
> /usr/local/share/texmf. My local TeX directory is in
> /usr/local/texmf. I've installed context in my local
> directory. Example:
> 
> ----------output----------------
> /usr/local/texmf/tex$ mkdir context
> -------end output---------------

Using teTeX 0.9 there is already an emty context directory
(which will be filled sooner or later :-)

> Assuming you have the unzip command, you can simply unzip the context
> distribution by saying something like `unzip
> /home/berend/download/context.zip'. Replace the directory
> `/home/berend/download' by the directory where you have stored the
> context distribution.

Since the most files are upper case I would recommend to 
change them to lower case by running  unzip -L

> Step 6: Move the context format file to its correct destination
> 
> You need to move the `context.fmt' file to its proper location. On my
> system this is the main TeX directory tree in the web2c directory. So
> I need to type:
> 
> ----------output----------------
> /usr/local/texmf/tex/context$ mv context.fmt /usr/local/share/texmf/web2c/
> -------end output---------------

I prefer to create a symbolic link since ConTeXt is updated fequently...

> Step 7: adjust your kpathsea searching database
> 
> TeX does quite some directory searching. To speed them up a special
> database is used with all files TeX uses. So although context.fmt is
> in the correct location, it still might not be found. cd to your main
> TeX directory and use `mktexlsr' to update your database. mktexlsr may
> also be called differently like `MakeTeXlsR'.
> 
> ----------output----------------
> /usr/local/share/texmf$ mktexlsr
> mktexlsr: Updating /usr/local/texmf/ls-R...
> mktexlsr: Updating /usr/local/share/texmf/ls-R...
> mktexlsr: Updating /var/tmp/fonts/ls-R...
> mktexlsr: Done.
> -------end output---------------

Using teTeX you may run texhash for that purpose (which invokes the
right program)

> Step 8: test it
> 
> Now create a simple context file and try to compile it. A simple
> context file is:
> 
> ---------------------------
> \starttekst
> \stoptekst
> ---------------------------
or for English and German:
\starttext / \stoptext

In fact the shortest possible file would be:

Hello world
\bye

> Compile it with `context test.tex'. Your output should be like this:

Tobias

PS: I hope that teTeX 1.0 will be released soon, since 0.9 is in no
Unix/Linux/FreeBSD distribution included.
Since it (0.9) is based on Web2c 7.2 and will include CONTeXT we
(hopefully) won't need such an install guide anymore. 
(The TeX Live CD is based on teTeX 0.9)