linux installations

linux installations

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

Dear all (and especially the linux heads...),

I have been playing with my linux partition lately and looking at the  
linux installation section in the wiki. I see there are two approaches:
- take the minimal linux distribution that Hans prepares,
- start from TexLive

I see why these approaches have their advantages. Nevertheless, I  
would want to add a further point: shouldn't we provide some hints  
for those who have a working TeX installation on linux and want to  
keep it because they are not (yet) exclusive ConTeXt users and want  
to be able to upgrade with their distribution's system?

I have played around with several distros and think some general  
points could go into the wiki:

1. look at texmf.cnf; find out where TEXMFLOCAL is on your system. In  
most distros, the directory doesn't exist yet, create it.

2. In the definitions of texmf.cnf, make sure that TEXMFLOCAL comes  
before the other TEXMF trees.

3. unzip cont-tmf.zip into this directory, run mktexlsr or texhash

4. run texexec --make --al

This last step gave and still gives me some headaches (my last  
attempt was with Opensuse 10.1 alpha 4), and that's where I ask for  
some elucidation: texexec does not rely on kpsewhich to locate the  
directory where it dumps the formats. So what I've seen happening is  
that I have brandnew formats in one place, yet texexec --version will  
still display the old versions (or say somehting like "cont-en.fmt  
unknown"). I have often just found out where kpsewhich searches for  
the formats and then replaced these old formats with symlinks to the  
new ones, but I'm not quite sure if this is a good approach. Does  
anyone have more insights on this? What's with this proliferation of  
TEXMF-trees in recent versions of teTeX: which ones do we actually  
need? Which ones can be deleted safely?

Thanks

Thomas

Re: linux installations

[Hans Hagen]

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

> This last step gave and still gives me some headaches (my last  
> attempt was with Opensuse 10.1 alpha 4), and that's where I ask for  
> some elucidation: texexec does not rely on kpsewhich to locate the  
> directory where it dumps the

texexec useses kpse but your texmf.cnf file may be kind of non standard; 
maybe you need to tweak that one

> formats. So what I've seen happening is  that I have brandnew formats 
> in one place, yet texexec --version will  still display the old 
> versions (or say somehting like "cont-en.fmt  unknown"). I have often 
> just found out where kpsewhich searches for  the formats and then 
> replaced these old formats with symlinks to the  new ones, but I'm not 
> quite sure if this is a good approach. Does  anyone have more insights 
> on this? What's with this proliferation of  TEXMF-trees in recent 
> versions of teTeX: which ones do we actually  need? Which ones can be 
> deleted safely?

good point ... i lost track of that long ago; there is some info in the 
tex live manual about all those additional home/sys/whatever trees, 
maybe reading that manual helps

Hans

Re: linux installations

[Taco Hoekwater]

Hi Thomas,

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
> Dear all (and especially the linux heads...),
> 
> I have been playing with my linux partition lately and looking at the  
> linux installation section in the wiki. I see there are two approaches:
> - take the minimal linux distribution that Hans prepares,
> - start from TexLive

Minor correction:
    - start from teTeX (not the same as texlive)

> I see why these approaches have their advantages. Nevertheless, I  would 
> want to add a further point: shouldn't we provide some hints  for those 
> who have a working TeX installation on linux and want to  keep it 
> because they are not (yet) exclusive ConTeXt users and want  to be able 
> to upgrade with their distribution's system?

I believe this is quite hard, because every distribution has a
slightly different teTeX setup. My view was: if you want an up-to-date
ConTeXt, start out fresh. Otherwise, you can save yourself an enormous
hassle by learning to live with an outdated system.

If you want to spend time on this, then kudos to you, but I have
given up on the distribution-supplied TeX's altogether.

> I have played around with several distros and think some general  points 
> could go into the wiki:
> 
> 1. look at texmf.cnf; find out where TEXMFLOCAL is on your system. In  
> most distros, the directory doesn't exist yet, create it.
>
> 2. In the definitions of texmf.cnf, make sure that TEXMFLOCAL comes  
> before the other TEXMF trees.
> 
> 3. unzip cont-tmf.zip into this directory, run mktexlsr or texhash

> 4. run texexec --make --al

Now you often still have a broken ConTeXt distribution, even if you
can get 4. to work, because you also need the latest latin-modern
font distribution.

And for that, you have to make another set of changes to texmf.cnf
because the older latin-moderns used different paths and filenames
for just about everything, and you have to make sure the new ones
are found. And don't forget that you probably have to fix updmap's
config file as well to make sure dvips remains working.

You'll also still have a rather outdated pdftex and metapost, but
I guess that is not really a big deal for most people.

> This last step gave and still gives me some headaches (my last  attempt 
> was with Opensuse 10.1 alpha 4), and that's where I ask for  some 
> elucidation: texexec does not rely on kpsewhich to locate the  directory 
> where it dumps the formats. So what I've seen happening is  that I have 
> brandnew formats in one place, yet texexec --version will  still display 
> the old versions (or say somehting like "cont-en.fmt  unknown"). I have 
> often just found out where kpsewhich searches for  the formats and then 
> replaced these old formats with symlinks to the  new ones, but I'm not 
> quite sure if this is a good approach. Does  anyone have more insights 

That solution is fine. Here's what happened. In the "really old" days,
formats ended with .fmt, like plain.fmt.

When etex and omega came around, they identified themselves by having
e.g. plain.efmt (note the extra "e"), so that they could coexist
happily.

However, this cluttered the build system quite a bit, so recently it
was decided to drop the extra characters. At that time, it was
understood that there would be an extra subdirectory below texmf/web2c
to differentiate between the different engines (at least, that is what
Hans and I gathered from the discussion). So you would have, e.g.
"web2c/pdfetex/cont-en.fmt"  as well as "web2c/omega/cont-en.fmt".

But it turned out that since LaTeX has separate names for the
different formats anyway (Lambda etc.), ConTeXt was the only client
of this new feature, and Thomas Esser decided that it was not worth
the effort to support these extra directories.

However, for ConText it  would be very, very unwieldy to have 
cont-pdfetex-en.fmt, cont-xetex-en.fmt, cont-aleph-en.fmt etc., each six
or seven times. And because context is always called through texexec,
the latest texexec's implement this engine subdirectory functionality
for you.

Finally, what goes wrong: unless you either delete the teTeX-supplied
context formats or change texmf.cnf, the old formats will be found first
by kpathsea.

> on this? What's with this proliferation of  TEXMF-trees in recent 
> versions of teTeX: which ones do we actually  need? Which ones can be 
> deleted safely?

The strangest ones are the ~/.texmf-var ones, where
fmtutil and updmap dump their stuff. They are documented in

   /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf

if you use Thomas' distribution.

Cheers and good luck!

Taco

Re: linux installations

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

Taco, Hans,

thanks for your reactions. And I see that Taco speaks from (bad)  
experience. I have always fiddled around and tried to make ConTeXt  
work in the linux distros i have tried so far (since I'm on ppc,  
there were four of them: gentoo, fedora, ubuntu, suse), but have  
never made any systematic approach. I'm really grateful for Taco's  
explanations; this helps me a lot.

On Dec 13, 2005, at 11:55 AM, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

>
> I believe this is quite hard, because every distribution has a
> slightly different teTeX setup. My view was: if you want an up-to-date
> ConTeXt, start out fresh. Otherwise, you can save yourself an enormous
> hassle by learning to live with an outdated system.
:-)
>
> If you want to spend time on this, then kudos to you, but I have
> given up on the distribution-supplied TeX's altogether.
>
> Now you often still have a broken ConTeXt distribution, even if you
> can get 4. to work, because you also need the latest latin-modern
> font distribution.
>
> And for that, you have to make another set of changes to texmf.cnf
> because the older latin-moderns used different paths and filenames
> for just about everything, and you have to make sure the new ones
> are found. And don't forget that you probably have to fix updmap's
> config file as well to make sure dvips remains working.
>
> You'll also still have a rather outdated pdftex and metapost, but
> I guess that is not really a big deal for most people.
OK, what about that: my aim would be to have one up-to-date ConTeXt  
installation in TEXMFLOCAL and leave everything else pretty much  
untouched. One could easily add a step to unzip cont-lmt.zip into  
TEXMFLOCAL as well. I've done it and it doesn't appear to break  
things with other TeX programs (disclaimer: I use pdf*tex  
exclusively, so I don't know about dvips).

>
> That solution is fine. Here's what happened. In the "really old" days,
> formats ended with .fmt, like plain.fmt.
>
> When etex and omega came around, they identified themselves by having
> e.g. plain.efmt (note the extra "e"), so that they could coexist
> happily.
>
> However, this cluttered the build system quite a bit, so recently it
> was decided to drop the extra characters. At that time, it was
> understood that there would be an extra subdirectory below texmf/web2c
> to differentiate between the different engines (at least, that is what
> Hans and I gathered from the discussion). So you would have, e.g.
> "web2c/pdfetex/cont-en.fmt"  as well as "web2c/omega/cont-en.fmt".
>
> But it turned out that since LaTeX has separate names for the
> different formats anyway (Lambda etc.), ConTeXt was the only client
> of this new feature, and Thomas Esser decided that it was not worth
> the effort to support these extra directories.
>
> However, for ConText it  would be very, very unwieldy to have cont- 
> pdfetex-en.fmt, cont-xetex-en.fmt, cont-aleph-en.fmt etc., each six
> or seven times. And because context is always called through texexec,
> the latest texexec's implement this engine subdirectory functionality
> for you.
>
> Finally, what goes wrong: unless you either delete the teTeX-supplied
> context formats or change texmf.cnf, the old formats will be found  
> first
> by kpathsea.
>

OK, then one step would be: find the old .fmt files and delete them.
>
> The strangest ones are the ~/.texmf-var ones, where
> fmtutil and updmap dump their stuff. They are documented in
>
>   /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
>
OK, will RTFM. One final thought: I remember reading an article (by  
Siep? in MAPS?) that having more than one texmf.cnf wasn't too  
difficult. Would that be an option I should try? Having one which  
just lets all the defaults provided by the distribution and one (set  
via an environment variable) which will put TEXMLOCAL before anything  
else?

Thanks, and best

Thomas

Re: linux installations

[Hans Hagen]

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

> OK, will RTFM. One final thought: I remember reading an article (by  
> Siep? in MAPS?) that having more than one texmf.cnf wasn't too  
> difficult. Would that be an option I should try? Having one which  
> just lets all the defaults provided by the distribution and one (set  
> via an environment variable) which will put TEXMLOCAL before anything  
> else?


make an .../texmf-mine and $TEXMFMINE and put that one first in the 
$TEXMF list; just make sure that your own stuff is found first

Hans