Paul Gevers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, > > I am currently working on packaging the MiKTeX-tools for Debian, which > consists mainly of a LaTeX package manager. (I hope you know the > tools.) Because MiKTeX pulls the packages from CTAN I was wondering if > you can tell me how TeXlive (which if I am correct also works from the > CTAN), works with licensing/copyrights,
Manual checking. We're not actually sure that we've already identified every non-free bit and taken it out. > because this is a large issue > with Debian. Someone [1] suggested to ask here. Of course it's an issue to have only DFSG-free software packaged in Debian. But how does that affect a package manager? Well, it would be really cool if the package manager was able to display the license of package I am about to download. But it doesn't affect its freeness which license data it downloads have. > By the way, how do you feel about such a LaTeX package manager for > Debian? Do you think it might be useful? Or does TeXlive include a > manager which does the same thing? I read somewhere that TeXlive is > also (partly) based on MiKTeX. Answering backwards, last question first: No, I don't think TeXliv is based on MikTeX. It's based on teTeX, and teTeX and MikTeX may have some common roots - although I think that rather has MikTeX taken over some ideas from teTeX, and then developped much further. TeXLive Upstream does have a user interface for selecting packages from the installation media, but it doesn't update from CTAN or install additional packages. It only handles the packages included when the particular TeXLive version was released. Therefore, it is not included in the Debian packages - we have our Debian texlive packages (which are not based on individual CTAN packages, but collections) and aptitude etc. for installing them. I do think that a package manager for updating individual packages and for installing add-on packages (new on CTAN, non-free, or not on CTAN at all) would be a nice thing to have. As far as I know, TeXLive upstream maintainers already work on such a feature (maybe even with MikTeX-like automatic package installation), but I'm not sure about it's status. I'd be surprised if it would be already in the soon-to-be-released 2008 version. Therefore, having such a package manager in Debian might be a good idea, too. However, be aware that it is not trivial to integrate the package manager with the TeX installation on Debian. I'm sure you've already studied the Debian TeX Policy; it provides for the TEXMF trees you need, but there's more to do. In particular, I don't think you should call the binary package miktex-tools. I'm not used to all of them, but it seems that what you mainly want to make available for Debian is mpm? I guess we do not want initexmf in Debian. As for the license, I guess you looked at the wrong place, on the Web site. You should have looked in the source tarball. There you'd find files named "COPYING", which unfortunately just contain a copy of the GPL, along with the instructions below it telling the author what he should have done... Regards, Frank -- Frank Küster Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
