Re: debian control file out of date? was: Re: live cd-with lilypondhttp://lilypond.org/doc/v2. 10/Documentation/topdocs/INSTALL

[Reinhold Kainhofer]

Am Samstag, 30. August 2008 schrieb Rob Canning:
> this is because as thomas explained :
> > When the package is upgraded, the old
> > automatically generated fonts need to be cleaned up, and we are using
> > kpsewhich to find them in order to delete them.
>
> i dont fully understand why this is a pre-depend and not a build-depend

This is the situation as far as I understand it from this thread:
Because in the really old versions (before lilypond 2.8, which was released 3 
years ago!), the debian package used the latex fonts and had to generate some 
files needed for latex, when the package was installed. So it was really a 
dependency. Now the problem is that these old Debian packages had a bug that 
they didn't clean up those files upon removal.
To "fix" this packaging bug, it was easiest for the packagers to simply remove 
them when lilypond is updated to a new version, that no longer needs these 
fonts. For this, they rely on the latex package.
However, this also means that ALL new users (who don't have these stale files 
anyway) will also be penalized for an old debian packaging bug, since they 
will also have latex automatically installed, even if there is absolutely no 
need for them.

> when a debian is upgraded is it not just removed and reinstalled?
> is there a difference between upgrade time and build time?
>
> when are these fonts generated? during runtime or buildtime? is it not
> the job of the old lilypond-data to cleanup after itself rather than the
> new version doing the clean up?

I think so. Apparently, the old packages didn't do it.

> its just that texlive-base is so huge it means lilypond cant be included
> on a debian based live cd -
>
> can anyone think of a way to do what kpsewhich utilising lower level tools
> ?

For new users there is absolutely no reason why the package should be 
dependent on latex in any way. It's only if the user has a really old version 
of lilypond installed, then they might have stale files lying around, which 
will be cleaned upon update using latex tools.

> or is there a way that maybe this clean up can be rendered unnecessary,
> perhaps whatever creates the fonts in the first place should clean up
> after itself?

The old lilypond package created those fonts, but didn't delete them. Since 
the debian packagers no longer can modify those old installed versions, they 
apparently decided to make the new packages still dependent on latex to do 
the cleaning now. So to get rid of those few files and clean up a few kB, the 
whole latex package with tens of MB will be installed...


Of course, anything explained above is just what I understood from this 
thread, so I might be completely wrong, too...

Cheers,
Reinhold
-- 
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Reinhold Kainhofer, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
email: address@hidden, http://reinhold.kainhofer.com/
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