Re: [PATCH v2] scripts: sphinx-pre-install: Fix ctex support on Debian

[Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com>]

On Sun, 9 Jan 2022 07:28:51 +0100, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> Em Sun, 9 Jan 2022 13:09:19 +0900
> Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com> escreveu:
> 
>> Hi Maruo,
>> (+Cc: Jon, linux-doc)
>>
>> On Thu, 6 Jan 2022 04:37:07 +0100, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
>>> Em Thu, 6 Jan 2022 11:00:08 +0900
>>> Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com> escreveu:  
>> [...]
>>>> Longer term (for CentOS stream9 or RHEL 9), we might need to ask
>>>> EPEL maintainers to add texlive-ctex.  
>>>
>>> Longer term, the script is actually fixing a broken dependency issue
>>> on distros. So, bugzillas for Fedora/Debian & derivated ones should be 
>>> opened for "texlive-xecjk" package to also select "texlive-ctex"
>>> (or whatever other name those packages have on distros).  
>>
>> FWIW, I asked Karl Berry, who is the chief maintainer of upstream
>> TeX Live, to add a dependency on ctex to xecjk [1].
> 
> Thanks for forwarding this question to him and to address it on distros!
> 
>>
>> [1]: https://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2022-January/047648.html
>>
>> Karl has added the dependency to xecjk as of rev 61529 [2].
>>
>> [2]: https://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2022-January/047654.html
>>
>> On up-to-date vanilla TeX Live 2021 (>= rev61529):
>>
>>     $ tlmgr info --data depends xecjk
>>     ctex
>>
>> With xecjk < rev61529
>>
>>     $ tlmgr info --data depends xecjk
>>     (no output)
> 
> Nice! Yeah, this is the long term solution, but still won't prevent
> people/distros based on older packages to keep using packages
> without such requirements.
> 
>> This dependency is expected to be reflected in the TeX Live
>> packaging for next Fedora release.
> 
> Yeah, Fedora is usually keen to changes.
> 
>> OTOH, as I mentioned earlier,
>> EPEL 9 (for CentOS stream9) doesn't have texlive-ctex at the
>> moment, so we need to see what happens there when RHEL 9 is ready.
> 
> Yes. RHEL/EPEL is usually a lot more conservative.
> 
>> Note: the xecjk -> ctex dependency is already taken care of
>> by openSUSE's TeX Live packages.   
> 
> On both Tumbleweed and on Leap?

I mean on Tumbleweed only.
Leap's xecjk is v3.4.8 and has no dependency on ctex.

> 
>> As for Ubuntu/Debian, it looks like TeX Live/Debian packaging
>> maintainer, Norbert Preining, has no intention of adding
>> dependency of texlive-xetex -> texlive-lang-chinese as can be
>> seen in his responses to a Debian Bug report [3].
>> I think this is a reasonable choice as most xetex users don't
>> use xecjk and texlive-lang-chinese is large in size.
>>
>> [3]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=961703
> 
> Debian package maintainer could reconsider it after the upstream
> dependency addition, but probably only for SID and yet-to-be-released
> versions.
>           Debian is very conservative on their releases. 
> Even if SID gains such dependency fix, I would be surprised 
> if they end porting a dependency change like that to Bullseye
> (which should be the latest version for ~1.5 years - with LTS
> extending it for ~3.5 years).
> 
> It sounds worth mentioning about the texlive dependency decision at
> the Debian bug.

I'm afraid I don't think so.
At Debian Latex wiki [3], they say:

  If you want to add support for your language (other than english) in
  TeX Live, search for texlive-lang [4] and install your language.

[3]: https://wiki.debian.org/Latex
[4]: https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=texlive-lang

This is the Debian's policy of TeX Live packaging.
I wouldn't complain if they say "Just install both of texlive-xetex
and texlive-lang-chinese if you want xecjk to work."

There are a lot of inter-collection dependencies in upstream TeX
Live, but many of then are ignored in TeX Live/Debian packages.
For example, ctex has a dependency on xecjk (reverse of the newly
added one) in upstream, but Debian's texlive-lang-chinese does not
depend on texlive-xetex.

        Thanks, Akira

> 
>>         Thanks, Akira
>>
>>>
>>> Worth mentioning that the script dependency-checking is should be smart
>>> enough to not break once texlive distro maintainers fix such issues.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Mauro
>>>