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

[Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com>]

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].

[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)

This dependency is expected to be reflected in the TeX Live
packaging for next Fedora release.  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.

Note: the xecjk -> ctex dependency is already taken care of
by openSUSE's TeX Live packages.   

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

        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
>