Richard Cobbe wrote:
Any nontrivial package (and teTeX certainly
qualifies!) has to rely on other packages in the system to satisfy
certain dependency requirements. Therefore, in general, it's going to
be non-trivial to install an .rpm on a Debian system, or a .deb on an
RPM-based system: the two systems do not necessarily provide the same
versions of various libraries, and so forth.
This is not necessarily a big deal. TeX is large, but not that
complex, and without that many dependencies. It is in general
rather self-contained. Yes, you need need the obvious libc stuff,
and pdftex needs zlib and libpng, but there isn't a lot else.
Obviously, 99% of a TeX system is system independent anyway.
Still, there may of course be hidden nasties.
--
Sebastian Rahtz
Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431
OSS Watch: JISC Open Source Advisory Service
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk
