search

conda-forge / texlive-core-feedstock

A conda-smithy repository for texlive-core.
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
1 stars 25 forks source link

Handle the additional Texlive packages #3

Open ocefpaf opened 8 years ago

ocefpaf commented 8 years ago

We can:

jankatins commented 8 years ago

IMO it would be good to have certain packages (e.g. whatever things like nbconvert or knitr need per default) installed when the default install method (not sure if that is texlive-core or a different package) is used.

That's actually the big advantage of miktex: it installs additional packages on the fly during the latex compilation step.

BTW: where are additional packages installed to if the user uses the package manager? That was a pain to configure in the miktex package...

jakirkham commented 8 years ago

So, TexLive is pretty massive and I would like to steer clear of some of the mistakes made by more traditional package managers of installing the kitchen sink. It would be nice if this package remained very minimal to solve that problem.

Though I do agree with @janschulz that we should have one package (probably a metapackage) to install the minimum usable level of TeX for use with things like nbconvert and knitr. I just do not think that texlive-core should be it. Maybe we could create a new package for that purpose and call it something like texlive-basic or similar. Not attached to that name per se, but something that conveys that minimum level of usability.

jakirkham commented 8 years ago

BTW: where are additional packages installed to if the user uses the package manager? That was a pain to configure in the miktex package...

Also, interested in the answer to this question. Didn't keep up with the latest changes to the PR. May muck around to see how this works now.

jakirkham commented 8 years ago

Regarding that last question, this seems like an interesting read, which could give us some pointers.

jakirkham commented 8 years ago

Seems Slack prefers not to use tlmgr, but repackages everything and use their package manager to do that. While that is a sensible decision in some ways, it requires a large amount of bandwidth to do. It might be nice to have tlmgr if people are uninterested in packaging/maintaining something TeX package.

jakirkham commented 8 years ago

We are having some discussion here on TeX Live and how we should use it in conda-forge. I'm copying you guys ( @damianavila @takluyver @willingc @minrk @rgbkrk @parente @pelson ) as I think we could really benefit from your feedback. The main use cases would be conversion programs like nbconvert and, as such, could be included in things like docker-stacks. If you have any thoughts on how you would like to see it packaged and how you would like to use it, that would be very useful for informing how we might proceed.

jakirkham commented 8 years ago

BTW: where are additional packages installed to if the user uses the package manager? That was a pain to configure in the miktex package...

To answer this question, @janschulz, the package manager is disabled by default. The source code does not include this possibility. There is a fair question of whether we want to have another package manager used (and if we want it installed by default).

IMHO we should investigate setting up tlmgr, but do so as a separate package (just as is the case with pip). This way if users want to use it to get something we didn't package, they have an option to do so. It should also be an explicit step for them to install it. Though we should really caution against using it for any complex packages and instead try to package those at conda-forge.

rgbkrk commented 8 years ago

At a minimum I'd love to get a baseline test that ensures our use of Tex with nbconvert is handled. Not sure if that means testing notebooks direct or finding out what minimum set of features we need.

pkgw commented 8 years ago

The set of Texlive packages in my texlive-selected recipe has enough to run nbconvert — see this file. Be warned that you need to install a fairly large number of Texlive packages to get an installation that runs at all, so if you want to distribute packages individually, you're going to be asking people to install a really large number of little packages. This is what led me to decide to put them all into one big lump.

jakirkham commented 8 years ago

The set of Texlive packages in my texlive-selected recipe has enough to run nbconvert — see this file.

Thanks for the pointers, @pkgw.

Be warned that you need to install a fairly large number of Texlive packages to get an installation that runs at all, so if you want to distribute packages individually, you're going to be asking people to install a really large number of little packages.

Not sure that there is agreement about breaking them up, but if there is we can still always have a metapackage to handle installation of all of these smaller packages as if they were bundled.

oulenz commented 6 years ago

It would be great if we could use tlmgr to freely install non-conda tex packages completely analogously to how pip can be used to install non-conda python packages.

pkgw commented 6 years ago

By the way, for my personal usage, I have superseded uses of TeXLive-based tooling with my own project tectonic (feedstock), which among other features can download support files on-the-fly and so can support a much more comprehensive set of packages without requiring a big packaged bundle of support files.

Lately I haven't been able to devote nearly enough time to Tectonic to promote its integration everywhere that might be able to leverage it, but on the other hand the TeX ecosystem is largely stable enough that I feel comfortable to encourage people to use it.

ocefpaf commented 6 years ago

I moved all my work flow to tectonic, installed with conda, and it works great for my needs. Thanks @pkg!

jakirkham commented 6 years ago

That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing @pkgw.

peterjc commented 6 years ago

Sadly tectonic is not a drop in replacement for my use-case, I need pdflatex installed: https://github.com/tectonic-typesetting/tectonic/issues/158#issuecomment-378263163

Neither sadly is the minimal texlive-core conda-forge package suitable, as it is missing key bits.

Where is conda-forge with a possible expanded package, or texlive-full, or support for tlmgr?

moskalenko commented 5 years ago

Would it at least be possible to build xelatex as a part of texlive-core, so JupyterLab could export notebooks to PDF via nbconvert? The nbconvert specifically requires xelatex. Thanks.

mariusvniekerk commented 5 years ago

@moskalenko if you can get that build going i'll be happy to merge it.

smithsp commented 4 years ago

@pkgw What happened to your texlive-selected conda package?

pkgw commented 4 years ago

@smithsp I developed tectonic :-)

ltalirz commented 1 year ago

Would it at least be possible to build xelatex as a part of texlive-core, so JupyterLab could export notebooks to PDF via nbconvert? The nbconvert specifically requires xelatex. Thanks.

I have the same use case (convert notebooks to PDF). I guess it is still not possible to support this use case via conda-forge packages alone?