Contributing a file to the archives
You have something to submit to the archive — great! Before we even
start, here’s a check-list of things to sort out:
- Licence: in the spirit of TeX, we hope for free software; in
the spirit of today’s lawyer-enthralled society, CTAN
provides a
list of “standard” licence statements.
Make sure that there’s a formal statement of the licence of your
package, somewhere in the files you upload; beyond the CTAN
installation, your package is a candidate for inclusion in (La)TeX
distributions … and thereafter, also in operating system
distributions … and the people who bundle all these things up
need a clear statement of your intent.
- Documentation: it’s good for users to be able to browse
documentation before downloading a package. You need at least a
plain text README file (exactly that name, upper case and no
.txt
extension); in addition a
PDF file of the package documentation, prepared for screen
reading, is highly desirable.
- Name: endless confusion is caused by name clashes. If your
package has the same name as one already on CTAN, or if your
package installation generates files of the same name as something
in a “normal” distribution, the CTAN team will delay
installation while they check that you’re doing the right thing:
they may nag you to change the name, or to negotiate a take-over
with the author of the original package.
Browse the archive to ensure uniqueness.
The name you choose should also (as far as possible) be somewhat
descriptive of what your submission actually does; while
“descriptiveness” is to some extent in the eye of the beholder,
it’s clear that names such as mypackage or jiffy
aren’t suitable.
If you are able to use anonymous ftp, you can upload that
way. The file README.uploads on CTAN tells you
where to upload, what to upload, and how to notify the CTAN
management about what you want doing with your upload.
You may also upload via the Web: each of the principal CTAN
sites offers an upload page — choose from
http://www.dante.de/CTAN/upload.html or
http://www.tex.ac.uk/upload.html; the pages lead you through the
process, showing you the information you need to supply. This method
enforces one file per upload: if you had intended to upload lots of
files, you need to bundle them into an ‘archive’ file of some sort;
acceptable formats are .zip
and .tar.gz
(or
.tar.bz2
). Most uploads are packed in .zip
format.
If you can use neither of these methods, or if you find something
confusing, ask advice of the
CTAN management
If your package is large, or regularly updated, it may be appropriate
to mirror your contribution direct into CTAN.
Mirroring is only practical using ftp
or rsync
protocols, so this facility is limited to those who can establish
their own server for one of those protocols.
- README.uploads
- README.uploads
This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=uploads