TeX Live and Debian

(Status: 19.10.06, np)

The Debian Packages are available from the usual Debian sources in the testing and unstable suites.

Introduction

Here you can find information on the Debian packaging of the TeX live system.

Please send comments and suggestions to the Debian TeX Task Force: debian-tex-maint@lists.debian.org, (or if you think that is related to an genuine TeX live problem, to the tex-live mailing list).

Please use the Debian Bug Tracking System for reporting bugs of the packages.

For the changes since the last version please see the website of the package QA tracking system texlive-base, texlive-bin, texlive-extra, texlive-lang, texlive-doc.

If you are interested in contributing to this project, please contact the Debian TeX Task Force at debian-tex-maint@lists.debian.org. You can take a look at the svn repository, either on the web or via svn://svn.debian.org/wsvn/debian-tex/texlive.

Installation

Installation is easy: If you use Debian/unstable (aka sid) or Debian/testing (aka etch, soon(?) it should be stable), just call 

	apt-get update
	apt-get install texlive
Which will bring you: texlive-latex-recommended, texlive-fonts-recommended, texlive-context, texlive-latex-base, texlive-base. You can go on and install additional packages (like texlive-latex-extra) and additional languages (like texlive-lang-german) and additional documentation (like texlive-doc-en).

If you want to have a system closely mirroring a TeX Live DVD, you can install the texlive-full packages, which pulls in all packages. At the moment it can only recommend some packages I have updated (see above and below for updpkg), but later on - as soon as all these packages are fixed to work with texlive - thee will be real depends. I.e., do 

	apt-get install texlive-full

Since entering testing we don't provide the original source here on the TUG server anymore.

Dependency problems

You may have noticed that many packages depend on tetex-(base|bin|extra) and when using the texlive packages they have to be removed from the system. This is - hopefully - a temporary problem. I already started submitting bugs to various packages to include an alternative dependency on texlive.

But there is a hack around this: Get the deb, unpack it as follows: 

	mkdir foo
	mkdir foo/DEBIAN
	mkdir new
	dpkg-deb -x xyz_version.deb foo
	dpkg-deb -e xyz_version.deb foo/DEBIAN
than edit foo/DEBIAN/control and add "| texlive-latex-recommended" to the dependenciy entries of tetex (I hope you know how to do this properly!). So for an example if you have 
	Depends: tetex-base, tetex-bin
than you could replace it with 
	Depends: tetex-base | texlive-latex-recommended, tetex-bin | texlive-base
Maybe it is a good idea to change also the version number to a NMU .1 so that the next real update actually overwrites your tweaked copy and you have to redo this. Finally build the new package 
	dpkg-deb -b foo new
and install the package build in new/xyz_version.1_i386.deb

I have adapted in this way several packages. You can use them without doing the above procedure yourself. Just add 

	deb http://www.tug.org/texlive/Debian/ updpkg/
to your /etc/apt/sources.list file and install the packages.

Take note that I take no responsibility of broken packages, missing stuff, etc, it is a quick hack, but I wanted to have these packages working.

Release verification using gnupg

All the Release files distributed via the TUG TeX live for Debian repository are sign with my private key. If you want to get rid of the warning of your apt-get/aptitude, import my public key into the apt keyring by calling: 

  wget -qO - http://www.logic.at/people/preining/dsa.asc | apt-key add -
The fingerprint of my key is: 
  14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76 A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094

teTeX users on Debian

tetex user on Debian can use some of the texlive packages. The dependencies and conflicts are such that a mixture of these packages is possible (within limits, of course).

Remarks

Thanks

I would like to thank Frank Küster, Sebastian Rahtz and Karl Berry for supporting me in all the work!

That's it, enjoy it!

$Date: 2006/10/20 08:44:27 $;