Re: [AUCTeX-devel] Re: Adding preview-latex support to Fedora Extra package of auctex

[David Kastrup]

"Jonathan Underwood" <address@hidden> writes:

> On 24/04/06, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>> That is a strange use of the word "yes".  I'd call that "no", unless
>> you are talking about a CVS tarball instead of the last released one.
>
> I looked at the spec file from the released tarball (not entirely
> unreasonable behaviour IMO).

Never said it wasn't.  But when I explain that it has changed since
then, where it can be found and ask whether you have looked at this
changed version, "yes" is still a strange answer.

>> The spec file from AUCTeX CVS is not supposed to need tweaking.
>
> OK - I will give the CVS spec file a whirl when I have a chance.
> However, the spec file from the release tarball fails to build on
> fedora,

Not only there, but also on SuSE.  I think we might have mentioned it
in the RELEASE announcement, but maybe not too prominently.

> and taking a (brief) look now at the CVS spec file, I think it will
> bomb out in the same way - as I recall it tries to install files
> directly into the tree, not into the buildroot - this is why I
> installed preview into the tetex tree, as naively I assumed that was
> the right place to put it.

Since we had successful build reports, I recommend you check this
out.  Preferably with the spec file from the SuSE src RPM, as I don't
quite remember whether the CVS spec file will still get along with the
11.82 tarball.

Alternatively, we could try releasing 11.83 soon.

>> Note that our RPM does _not_ provide preview-latex-common (which
>> LyX expects) since it does not install preview.sty into the teTeX
>> tree.  For this purpose, there should be a separate, independent
>> package in the spec file, which isn't the case now.
>
> Ah, ok. I had read in the documentation on the auctex website that
> you discouraged breaking the tarball into separate packages for
> auctex and preview-latex.

And we do so.  We are not talking about a separate package for
preview-latex, but merely for the preview style files which are _not_
going to be used by preview-latex or AUCTeX (they have their own
copies).  This is what I mean by "separate, independent package".

> I do not have access to the documentation at the moment,

It should be on the web site IIRC, though I don't know whether we
track the CVS version there.  So the advice might be slightly dated.

But of course, you could use the project pages and look into the CVS
at doc/install.texi.

> but it seems clear I need to study the "Advice for package
> providers" carefully.

It would save some discussion.

> Thanks again for the advice, I'll try and do a better job of the
> next spec version.

It's not like we could not make use of somebody who was willing to
work out the spec file details before release (so that we don't ship
tarballs with unfunctional spec files).  If you could be persuaded to
put some work into that which can be used in the upstream version of
AUCTeX as well, we'd need a copyright assignment to the FSF.  I can
send you the necessary form if you'd like to consider that.

Of course, having a useful downstream Fedora version would already be
an improvement, but I guess it would save all involved parties work if
we could fix this upstream.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum