[Tex/LaTex] Installing TeXlive on Ubuntu, revisited

debianinstallingtexliveUbuntu

The Debian/Ubuntu packages for TeXlive are usually outdated, sometimes up to several years behind CTAN. Now, I understand that

packaging TeX Live takes a lot of work

and, if you want to follow the latest developments, you essentially have to install from scratch (also here and here) using tlmgr and then create a "dummy" package (from tug.org).

Is anyone aware of efforts to automate this for Debian/Ubuntu? Once automated, this could be wrapped into an "installer package" (as seen for zotero, libflashplayer-plugin, nautilus-dropbox, …). This installer package has a version and dependencies, but does not contain the files — they are downloaded and installed in the "configure" step of dpkg. Wouldn't this be sweet:

apt-get install texlive-installer

gets you an up-to-date TeXlive with no need for manual updates (since the installer package will update the TeXlive installation on apt-get upgrade).

Advertisement: I have even pushed my own dummy package to a PPA, so that the next time I need to install a new machine I don't have to redo this. (Hope I got the dependencies right…)

Best Answer

I have to disagree and advise with a few points:

  • Debian/wheezy contains TeX Live 2012, the latest released version of TeX Live
  • TeX Live 2013 prerelease will soon be uploaded the Debian/sid (maybe today if I manage it)
  • linking apt-get with tlmgr update as you suggested is a very bad idea, since by now tlmgr does not return proper error codes, which means that apt-get cannot know if it worked out properly or not
  • using the above outlined method you will loose integration of other Debian TeX related packages (though, I have to admit, TeX Live contains almost everything anyway)
  • you are not guaranteed to get running binaries for all systems

All this combined I (as Debian maintainer of the TeX packages and TeX Live tlmgr programmer) strongly advise against such a package. Of course everyone is free to publish whatever package there might be, but I am quite sure that it will not end up in Debian, at least.

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