Hello list. I've started an rpm package repository for LaTeX packages targeting the teTeX distribution. At least for now, I'm restricting it to noarch packages (ie tex4ht would not be a candidate for inclusion).
The temporary homepage is at http://mpeters.us/tetexrpm/ Some packages are not part of teTeX, some packages are part of teTeX. The purpose is to allow easy rpm (via yum) installation of packages, including updates to what is already in teTeX (such as beamer). To avoid file conflicts with the existing teTeX rpm's on a users system, it uses a new texmf tree at /usr/share/texmf-rpm. The user has to manually modify the texmf.cnf file, I don't want to modify that for the user because as a user I dislike rpm's that modify configuration files of other packages, unless the other package provides a specific facility for doing so (like updmap-sys in teTeX). The purpose of the repository is to be as distribution independent as possible. It will work best with distributions that use rpm, for obvious reasons - but I'm hoping that since these are all noarch packages, it will be easy to make them work on virtually any *nix (even Darwin/OS X - if the user has installed rpm). In cases like fontools where the package as a binary dependency is where the user may have to do a little extra work (installing a binary rpm for the dependency if the distribution does not package it). I'd like it to be a community effort, and so I'm seeking people who wish to contribute, comment on the documentation/packaging standards, and of course test the packages. Axel Thimm from ATrpms has graciously offered to help with some of the infrastructure, such as SVN and mail list needs. I'd like to take him up on it, but I'm not going to until there are some other people involved. For now, a google group has been established for discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/tetexrpm/ Thank you.
