Re: texlive organization on netbsd

[Mayuresh <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost>]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 07:48:34PM +0200, Thomas Klausner wrote:
> We have at current count well over 1000 tex-* packages packaging
> texlive. Just install the ones you need with pkg_add. There are still
> many missing, but if you find a particular one, just request it,
> adding them is quite easy (pkgsrc/pkgtools/texlive2pkg).
> 
> So I don't think there is a problem.

texlive2pkg sounds good, didn't know about it. 1000+ sounds a good number
and probably it might meet my needs. Or let's assume so for now.

So far so good.

texlive right now has 4924 packages and counting. While it's true that no
single individual needs all of them at once, if we wish pkgsrc to be
used by more and more people we have to expect someone to need them at
some point of time or the other. The moment one needs one of the
unsupported ones, there will be a certain amount of latency to add one.
Firstly there will be inertia on requester's part as it is a digression to
take mind out of the document preparation and turn to packaging first.
Secondly, there will be some amount of latency in getting the package
into pkgsrc. It may or may not be possible to either take the attention
out or wait that long for every requester.

Compare this with pip which pkgsrc has (rightly) supported. I myself have
used several python packages that were not in pkgsrc, but I could get them
quickly thanks to presence of pip in pkgsrc.

I have not used R on pkgsrc, but may be the situation is similar there. I
guess nodejs is another huge collection with similar situation.

This is not a question of advocating tool A or tool B. It's about
accepting that there are large software systems that have got their own
ever growing package collection and it would be impracticable to play a
catch up game with them.

We can even view packages as data (in many cases they are just that) and
see them just like we see vim plugins for example, which we do not insist
on mapping to pkgsrc, but install directly using the facilities provided
by respective software.

We have done the right thing for python by supporting pip, and similarly
npm for nodejs in pkgsrc.  Wonder why not do the same for texlive.

I am even fine with taking up a wip initiative as I described in OP. Will
just need help and support (some of my early questions, mostly pertaining
to incumbent state of packages and their organization are in the OP).

Mayuresh