Comment 25 for bug 712521

Hi Jan-Åke,

On So, 16 Okt 2011, Jan-Åke Larsson wrote:
> I resent being called a dummie. I maintain one of the binary tools in
> texlive.

I very much appreciate that you maintain programs related to TeX,
but I stand by my point, first that 90% or more of the people
complaining on Launchpad are dummies searching simply for the
newest versions without an actual need.
Only the point about crying for "tlmgr" is already explanation
enough that these are dummies.
Secondly, what is needed is someone who can help packaging, and there is
loads of work, see below.

> don't. Is this a Debian packaging problem or is it Ubuntu? (For Debian I

That is *the*same*. Ubuntu *IS* Debian with a bit of beautification
added. The TeX packages go one-to-one from Debian to Ubuntu.

> contribute what I can). Second: Is there a big difference in package
> generation between 2009 and 2011? (why not just lift the version, no
> rants please)

Yes. The distribution layout has changed, updmap has been replaced by
a perl script, and since we patch it we need to rewrite the patches
completely.
Several other changes to scripts etc were done, which means loads of
patches have to be rewritten.
THe layout has changed, as there is only a compressed distribution
now, that means the scripts that create the packages have to be rewritten
(done already, but not finished).

> I see that you mention a new release layout. How many hours work would
> you need to spend to finish this?

No idea, 50, maybe 100? With decent testing more.

Best wishes

Norbert
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Norbert Preining preining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
JAIST, Japan TeX Live & Debian Developer
DSA: 0x09C5B094 fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76 A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
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