[Slackbuilds-users] Tex Live 2014 - Update / Part 2

[B Watson]

On 7/1/14, Eugen Wissner <belka.ew at gmail.com> wrote:
> Right, it can be a dependency for documentation building; now I understand
> why it's needed.

I could seriously wish some packages (especially ffmpeg) would make the
docs optional (e.g. export DOCS=no, which would add --disable-doc to the
configure command). It would save a lot of confusion for new users, and
some effort and disk space for those of us who don't need the API docs.

My own SlackBuilds, if there are API docs, I like to make them optional,
especially large ones, or ones that need tex to build, or *especially*
ones that need some other 3rd-party package to build the docs (that
almost nobody is going to read).

A bit more on-topic here: if texlive is being split into a core package
that will be on the next DVD release, plus extra bits that come from
SBo if needed, it would be worthwhile to go through the SBo builds that
depend on tex and make sure the stuff most of them need will be in the
core package (if feasible, I know space on the DVD is a concern).

If I can find some time in the next few days, I'll see if I can
semi-automate this testing: run each build once with all of Robby's
texlive stuff installed, and once with only the core package, see which
ones fail, and see whether the generated docs are identical in both
runs... but there's no point doing this until the final decision is made
on what goes on the DVD and what doesn't... and it'd be nice to have a
list of all the SBo packages that use tex as part of the build process
(not easy to auto-generate this list but if you're reading this and you
know your build uses it, reply to this & let us know).

Unless of course someone's way ahead of me and has already started
doing this...