[AUCTeX-devel] Re: Information about RPM systems?

[Reiner Steib]

On Thu, Jun 08 2006, David Kastrup wrote:

> Reiner Steib <address@hidden> writes:
>> In addition to the changes I've installed yesterday, I'd like to
>> propose to add a directory argument for texhash/mktexlsr, see below.
>
> Not sure that all relevant teTeX versions grok that.  We are talking
> teTeX 2.0 here, if not earlier.

I checked this on SuSE 9.2 which has tetex-2.0.2.

>> AFAICS, mktexlsr is the canonical name now, isn't it?  At least
>> (info "(kpathsea)Filename database generation") mentions mktexlsr.

The node in teTeX 1.0 / Debian 3.0 also mentions _only_ mktexlsr, see
below.

> Again, "now" is not the same as "the most outdated TeX distribution in
> the most outdated OS distribution that has not reached end-of-support
> by now".

,----[ http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060601 ]
| June 1st, 2006
|
| Security Support for Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 to be terminated on June 30th
`----

,----
| $ cat /etc/debian_version 
| 3.0
| $ /usr/bin/mktexlsr --help
| Usage: mktexlsr [DIRS ...]
| 
| Rebuild all necessary ls-R filename databases completely. If one or
| more arguments DIRS are given, these are used as texmf directories to
| build ls-R for. Else all directories in the search path for ls-R files
| ($TEXMFDBS) are used.
| $ ls -l /usr/bin/mktexlsr /usr/bin/texhash 
| -rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         4640 Dec 16 04:49 /usr/bin/mktexlsr
| lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            8 Jan 30 19:35 /usr/bin/texhash -> 
mktexlsr
| $ apt-cache show tetex-bin
| Package: tetex-bin
| [...]
| Version: 1.0.7+20011202-7.7
`----

SuSE 9.0 already had teTeX 2.0 and is discontinued since December
2005:

,----[ http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.suse.security.announce/260 ]
| Subject: Discontinued SUSE Linux Distribution: 9.0
| Newsgroups: gmane.linux.suse.security.announce
| Date: 2005-11-14 12:32:23 GMT
| 
| Dear suse-security-announce subscribers and SUSE LINUX users,
| 
| SUSE Security announces that SUSE Linux 9.0 (Personal and Professional
| edition) will be discontinued soon. Having provided security-relevant
| fixes for more than two years, vulnerabilities found in SUSE Linux 9.0
| after December 15 2005 will not be fixed any more for this product.
`----

Fedora Core 2 has tetex-2.  If I understand
http://lwn.net/Alerts/183673/ correctly, FC1 also already has tetex-2.
I couldn't find information about still supported versions for Fedora.

>> Does it make sense to specify the path "/usr/bin/"?
>
> Yes.  There are too many alternative TeX systems around that might be
> installed on a machine.  We don't want to update the wrong TeX system
> when the package is installed.  The update should be the system tree
> TeX system.

Okay, I withdraw this part of the suggestion.

> So I am not in favor of both suggestions out of the box.  I might
> change my opinion on the first one if you do all the research that
> makes sure that mktexlsr (as well as the directory option) is
> available on _all_ systems still actively in support.

Which systems (teTeX versions?) do _we_ try to support actively?  In
general (for AUCTeX) and for the RPMs?

Independent of the current issue, we might want to add this somewhere
in our documentation.

> I'd be too lazy to do that myself, as I don't see much benefit in
> it.

I installed our preview-tetex RPM on several machines today which
share /usr/local (mounted read-only on the NFS clients).  On each
client the %post directive complained about not being able to update
/usr/local/share/texmf/ls-R.  I'm not sure if it's good practice to
touch /usr/local at all (cf. FHS).

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/