Automatically install and update latex packages on linux
Joris Desmet
automatically install and update latex packages on linux?
I'm thinking about something like the miktex update manager on windows,
but more ideally an rpm-repository containing an rpm for each latex
package or for each group of packages so that installing a latex package
from CTAN could be done by typing
yum install package
Does anybody know if this exists?
Thanks,
--Joris
Joris Desmet
> I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but is there any way to
> automatically install and update latex packages on linux?
For clarity: of course, I'm not talking about the packages that are
included in the tetex distribution.
Martin Heller
> I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but is there any way to
> automatically install and update latex packages on linux?
>
> I'm thinking about something like the miktex update manager on windows,
The MiKTeX package manager is available for linux as well: <URL:
http://www.miktex.org/unx/>.
> but more ideally an rpm-repository containing an rpm for each latex
> package or for each group of packages so that installing a latex package
> from CTAN could be done by typing
Michael Friendly
> Joris Desmet skrev:
>
>> I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but is there any way to
>> automatically install and update latex packages on linux?
>> I'm thinking about something like the miktex update manager on windows,
>
>
> The MiKTeX package manager is available for linux as well: <URL:
> http://www.miktex.org/unx/>.
It refers to a program, mpm, which I tracked down at sourceforge,
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=10783&package_id=160151
Something like this is long overdue for linux, where installation &
updating of other packages is nearly trivial and makes maintenance quite
simple. This is largely because packages state (a) where their files
belong in the directory tree(s), (b) their version information and (c)
what other packages/versions they depend on. Then, install/update tools
can just *do the right thing*.
As it is, installing/updating packages from CTAN is quite a chore.
Perhaps it is time for CTAN and tetex maintainers to consider
a more modern maintenance toolset.
>> but more ideally an rpm-repository containing an rpm for each latex
>> package or for each group of packages so that installing a latex package
>> from CTAN could be done by typing
>
for debian linux, there are a few .deb packages e.g., apt-get install
latex-beamer does the right thing by installing latex-xcolor
--
Michael Friendly Email: frie...@yorku.ca
Professor, Psychology Dept.
York University Voice: 416 736-5115 x66249 Fax: 416 736-5814
4700 Keele Street http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/friendly.html
Toronto, ONT M3J 1P3 CANADA
Ralf Stubner
> for debian linux, there are a few .deb packages e.g., apt-get install
> latex-beamer does the right thing by installing latex-xcolor
For Debian Linux, there also is <http://tug.org/texlive/debian.html>.
Currently only available in 'experimental', but that will change. BTW,
the non-binary TeX Live packages can be used together with the teTeX 3.0
packages in 'unstable' (should migrate to testing soon, backports for
stable are available). So you can add, eg, the 'latex-extra' collection
from TeX Live to an existing teTeX installation.
cheerio
ralf
Robin Fairbairns
>As it is, installing/updating packages from CTAN is quite a chore.
>Perhaps it is time for CTAN and tetex maintainers to consider
>a more modern maintenance toolset.
there are not enough hours in the day. there are more people working
on texlive than the total set working on tetex and ctan (and the set
working on ctan have all on to earn a living and keep ctan going).
what's more, there are huge numbers of packages and applications that
aren't available from ctan -- most developers seem to have given up on
us, so anyone _not_ tied to ctan would seem a better bet.
anyway, why not forget tetex and use texlive instead? -- that _does_
at least have an installer.
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Heiko Oberdiek
> As it is, installing/updating packages from CTAN is quite a chore.
> Perhaps it is time for CTAN and tetex maintainers to consider
> a more modern maintenance toolset.
Just do it. The problem is not that nobody want to have such a tool,
the problem is there aren't volunteers that actually do the work.
Yours sincerely
Heiko <ober...@uni-freiburg.de>
Jonathan Fine
This is an excellent, even if frequently asked, question.
I would like to propose a fresh approach.
A large part of the problem, of course, is name clashes. For example,
there may be two or more packages called 'mythesis.sty' out there in
the world. And there are, of course, multiple versions of the files
that make up packages such as hyperref and memoir.
Moreover, to ensure that /documents/ can be moved from one system
to another, we may have to have several versions of a package
installed at the same time. A large part of our difficulties arise
because we have not solved this problem.
Here's a solution. Every 'archived' resource is stored in more-or-less
the same location on every installation. We sort of have this already,
except that /all/ versions of memoir.cls are stored in the /same/
location. Which is a name clash.
So instead suppose that versions of, say, memoir.cls, are stored as
/usr/archive/peter_wilson/memoir-1.3.cls
and so forth. Well, a system for maintiaining such an archive can't
be too hard to write, if it hasn't been written already. (For example,
see the links to GIT below. And also rsynch:
http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/
So now getting new packages is a matter of /adding/ files to the
archive. But existing files are not changed (except if not needed,
they might be deleted).
Now, how to use the archive. Here we use an SGML-style catalog.
I've posted recently to c.t.t about that.
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.text.tex/msg/0db58dfb8a9f5d9f
A catalog contains mappings such as
ENTITY "memoir.cls" "/usr/archive/peter_wilson/memoir-1.3.cls"
that pick up exactly the right resource.
Compatibility between different versions of packages is, sadly,
hard work. This is another issue, which is closely related to
that of installing new packages and versions without breaking
anything. And this compatiblity can be, sadly, hard work.
However, catalog files can be archived. So one might have
catalog files such as
/use/archive/tex_live/latex_cat-1.4.cat
in the archive.
All this is, perhaps, somewhat related to the GIT source code
management software.
http://www.kernel.org/git/
http://linux.yyz.us/git-howto.html
I hope this helps.
--
Jonathan
jma...@math.ist.utl.pt
http://www.tetexrpm.org/