[Tex/LaTex] Best way to install packages for TeXLive in Ubuntu

installingpackagestexliveUbuntu

I want to install a package (specifically xlop). I'm using TeXLive on Ubuntu, and I don't really know my way around LaTeX.

Can apt-get install or something similar be used?

Best Answer

A lot of frequently used *TeX packages have been combined into Ubuntu packages. In this case a quick search in the Ubuntu Package Manager shows that xlop is part of the texlive-generic-extra package, which you can install using apt-get install or the GUI as preferred.

Having said that, it's not particularly difficult to install *TeX packages manually once you've identified the right tree to put them in (CTAN has pre-zipped versions of a lot of packages, which makes it even easier - you just have to unzip them at the right place and run texhash), and you then have the advantage of being sure you're up-to-date. At the moment I believe the Ubuntu versions are lagging quite a way behind TeX Live releases (let alone any subsequent package updates).

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[Tex/LaTex] TeX Live — problem with install [Ubuntu, bash]; new packages

actually this is a further comment on corentin's answer, but it exceeds 600 characters.

Since http://www.tug.org/texlive/devsrc/Master/texmf-dist/tex/latex/ is an Apache directory listing you can try downloading packages with wget. For example if you want to download l3experimental where xcoffins is a subfolder you can invoke wget like

wget --cut-dir=4 -np -R "index.html*" -nH -P ~/texmf -r http://www.tug.org/texlive/devsrc/Master/texmf-dist/tex/latex/l3experimental/

wget --cut-dir=6 -np -R "index.html*" -P ~/texmf/tex/latex -r http://www.tug.org/texlive/devsrc/Master/texmf-dist/tex/latex/l3experimental/

this.

-P ~/dir/in/home/directory/ specifies the local directory where wget should put your files.
-nH tells wget that you don't want to create directories named after the host i.e. ~/texmf/www.tug.org/*/*/ looks not so nice and latex won't find anything under ~/texmf/www.tug.org. But you can omit -nH and change the local directory to -P ~/textmf/tex/latex. Then you have a seperate directory tree that latex also searches.
whereby --cut-dir=x means that you don't want to create the first x folders of the uri in your local directory (you want to create ~/texmf/tex/latex/l3experimental/ or ~/texmf/tex/latex/www.tug.org/l3experimental/ instead of ~/textmf/texlive/devsrc/Master/texmf-dist/tex/latex/l3experimental).
-R instructs wget to exclude all files beginning with index.html.
-r is for recursive fetch
the argument of -P is the directory where you want to save all those things
-np excludes all parent directories of l3experimental (of course you can find a more detailed description in the manual pages of wget)

but generally be careful if you download things with wget recursively it could mess up a whole directory tree. I would recommend you to first download the files in a temporary directory (for example with -P ~/texmftemporary) where you can examine the downloaded directory tree.

Since latex also searches recursively for packages in ~/texmf/tex/latex you don't have to bother if xcoffins is a subfolder of any other folder/folders.

Of course you can redefine things further if you write a little bash, perl or whatever script that is based on the above command.

Maybe this helps you!?

[Tex/LaTex] Install texlive

Since you seem to have some troubles with the concept of $PATH etc, you will be much better off by using the Ubuntu packages; see this question and its answers.

Best Answer

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