$Id$ How to set up your own TeX Live Packages repository =================================================== (This document is public domain.) TeX Live 2008 contains the TeX Live Manager, which allows updates over the network. By specifying different installation sources the user can in theory install packages using tlmgr from a different source as the default TeX Live repository. This document describes how to set up a repository in a way that tlmgr can use it. Possible applications include distribution of company-internal packages or non-free stuff not included in TeX Live. Note that this document is very much work in progress (as is most of the TeX Live infrastructure). If you have any questions please contact us at tex-live@tug.org. Contents -------- 0. Preliminaries 1. Prerequisites 2. Preparing the "repository" 3. tlpsrc files 4. Creating the TeX Live Database 5. Adjusting the revision numbers 6. Making the web distribution 7. Testing your distribution 8. Final notes (and unsupported stuff) 0. Preliminaries ---------------- First of all, before you start with providing your own packages, please be reminded that you should take good care not to - overwrite files which are in a different package The current system does NOT check for files that got overwritten - take care not to hose the rest of the TeX Live system, imagine you install a package that removes/deletes tlmgr -- the user will hardly be able to revert to any working state! - test, test, and again TEST before shipping your stuff - might be good to alert us at tex-live@tug.org so that we can take a look and comment, or check for other problems. Also, if we change something in the infrastructure you have a better chance in getting notifications and better treatment ;-) In principle what you have to do is to set up some directory in a layout paralleling the one in our repository under Master. See http://www.tug.org/texlive/svn/ for details on accessing our repo. That means, with ROOT as the root of your local "repository": ROOT/tlpkg/ infrastructure stuff, modules, scripts ROOT/texmf-dist/ stuff where you should put your TeX code, fonts etc ROOT/texmf{,-doc} if you have the need for that please read first about their usage in the TeX Live Guide. After that you call the very same scripts as we do when building the distribution database in ROOT/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb Finally you create/update your web distribution from that ROOT. 1. Prerequisites ---------------- You need from the TeX Live Repository (see http://www.tug.org/texlive/svn/) the contents of at least Master/tlpkg/TeXLive the perl modules Master/tlpkg/bin the scripts for managing These files can be checked out via svn, or downloaded from the net. We recommend the first variant so that you can update them regularly. 2. Preparing your repository ---------------------------- Create a root folder which will mirror our directory layout. We will call that root folder ROOT from now on. Put the above files into ROOT/tlpkg/TeXLive ROOT/tlpkg/bin After that put all of YOUR files in a TDS compliant way in one of the texmf trees, texmf-dist, texmf, texmf-doc. ROOT/texmf{,-dist,-doc} We recommend putting all the files in ROOT/texmf-dist or, if you are replacing a package which is already present in TeX Live, in the very same places as in TeX Live. If you really want to replace packages with files in texmf, please think twice, and maybe contact us before. 3. tlpsrc files --------------- Now you have to create several TeX Live Package Source files, .tlpsrc files and place them into ROOT/tlpkg/tlpsrc You have to have ONE .tlpsrc file for each package you want to ship, and furthermore ONE for your overall installation, called 00texlive.config.tlpsrc. This should contain (at least) the following lines: name 00texlive.config category TLCore depend container_split_src_files depend container_split_doc_files depend container_format/lzma depend release/YOUR_ID_AND_MAYBE_YEAR The "container_split_src_files" and "container_split_doc_files" are options, they specify whether at a later stage the container script will generate separate .tar.lzma archives for source and doc files, or put all of them into one .tar.lzma. It is up to you. The depend container_format/lzma is *obligatory* because currently we do NOT support any other format. Finally the depend release/YOUR_ID_AND_MAYBE_YEAR is not used, but you could add here some identification string; it can't hurt, and we might be able to display it to the user in the future. For the rest of your package you should create .tlpsrc files describing their content. Either copy one of our .tlpsrc files, or (much better) PLEASE read the documentation of TLPSRC.pm (in POD format). Some guidelines: For simple packages, say a LaTeX package foobar, put all the files in ROOT/texmf-dist/tex/latex/foobar/ ROOT/texmf-dist/source/latex/foobar/ ROOT/texmf-dist/doc/latex/foobar/ then create a two-line .tlpsrc file foobar.tlpsrc containing: name foobar category Package (that is all). The rest will be automatically done by our scripts. If you want to understand that, read the section on auto-generated patterns in the TLPSRC.pm documentation. 4. Creating the TeX Live Database --------------------------------- If you have set up all your local files, and the tlpsrc files, you can create the TeX Live Database in ROOT/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb by calling perl ROOT/tlpkg/bin/tlpsrc2tlpdb -from-files -all The -from-files does use a find command to find all the files in ROOT instead of using "svn status" what is done normally. The -all makes tlpsrc2tlpdb work on all tlpsrc files present in ROOT/tlpkg/tlpsrc/. Presumably this won't be very many files. But if you like, you can specify individual package names instead of -all. You can add the option -with-win-pattern-warning which will warn on missing files for Windows; some of those warnings are by default suppressed. As usual, please read the documentation of tlpsrc2tlpdb (again in POD) for further information. That process will probably show you some warnings; read them carefully. After it runs successfully, you should have a file ROOT/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb Your next job is to check that your new texlive.tlpdb has the files you expected in the corresponding packages that you expected. Go through the entire file (each package starts with a line "name foobar") and the file list.. If you are not content, work on your patterns to fix that. There are some scripts in tlpkg/bin/ starting with "check-" which you might use for doing some checks on your repository. 5. Adjusting the revision numbers --------------------------------- While reading through the texlive.tlpdb you might have seen that all the packages will have revision 0 in there. The revision is used for checking which one is newer. So if you have different "releases" of a package you should increase the revision number from one step to the next. If you want to change that, there are several options: - do it by hand in the texlive.tlpdb ... if you can remember what numbers you already shipped - do it automatically with some script which takes into account the already shipped version of the packages, or the version of the package in the main TeX Live repository (if you replace a TeX Live package) An example for doing that take a look at our repository tlpkg/etc/tlrepo-from-minimals.pl 6. Making the web distribution ------------------------------ Now that the texlive.tlpdb has been set up, revision numbers adjusted, you can create or update your web distribution with perl ROOT/tlpkg/bin/tl-update-containers -location DEST -no-setup The -location gives the place where your former distribution was or where it should be created. In the former case only those containers with larger revision numbers are recreated. In the latter case all containers are created. The option -no-setup does not call the built-in routines for determining the location of the lzma and tar binary, and calls simply "lzma" and "tar". So you should have them in your PATH. If you do not give this option you also have to check out some more files, like config.guess, and tlpkg/installer where the binaries for lzma for the architectures we ship are present. 7. Testing your distribution ---------------------------- Having completed all these steps, you can test your distribution by calling the TeX Live Manager with the location argument. Continuing the above exmaple we use DEST: tlmgr -location DEST update --list or tlmgr -location DEST update --all or tlmgr -location DEST list etc. Please see the documentation of tlmgr (POD again) for details. 8. Final notes (and unsupported stuff) -------------------------------------- We cannot repeat it often enough, please don't play around with files not belonging to your packages. That is dangerous! Finally, besides the usual post installation stuff (running mktexlsr, fmtutil and updmap) you have no way to change the post installation and removal procedure at this time. Currently all the Post actions are hard coded into tlpkg/TeXLive/TLPostActions.pm as it is on the installed system (not the one in your repo, so changing something there will NOT help). You might ask us for including something there (but we need GOOD reason for that), or you have to wait until we extended the infrastructure such that post actions can be specified freely in the .tlpsrc file. If you have further comments, questions, additions to this file please let us know at tex-live@tug.org.