Re: [core-updates] texlive 2021 bootstrap problem

[Thiago Jung Bauermann]

Hello Maxim,

Em quinta-feira, 24 de junho de 2021, às 15:26:55 -03, Maxim Cournoyer 
escreveu:
> Hi Thiago,
> 
> Thiago Jung Bauermann <bauermann@kolabnow.com> writes:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > Em terça-feira, 15 de junho de 2021, às 16:00:51 -03, Thiago Jung
> > Bauermann> 
> > escreveu:
> >> Does anyone have an idea how to break this dependency loop? Do we need
> >> to have a package definition for a pre-2019-10 version of LaTeX just
> >> to build texlive-latex-l3kernel, and then use that as a dependency
> >> for the actual texlive-latex-base package?
> > 
> > I’m pursuing this option. I took the definition of texlive-latex-base
> > from the master branch (which doesn’t depend on LaTeX3) and added it
> > to my branch as texlive-latex-no-l3 (with a few minor changes to get
> > it to build with texlive 2021), and used it as a dependency to build
> > texlive-latex- l3kernel.
> > 
> > This worked! Now texlive-latex-l3kernel builds correctly, and the build
> > of texlive-latex-base is attempted (instead of just causing Guix to
> > max out its heap while trying to process a dependency loop, as it was
> > doing before). But the build fails when generating some latex formats
> > – a problem I’m still investigating.
> > 
> > But this is progress nevertheless. :-)
> 
> Thumbs up for working and figuring things out for a texlive 2021
> upgrade!

Thank you! I was just going to report on recent developments.
It turns out that using an older LaTeX to build texlive-latex-l3kernel 
isn’t necessary.

I decided to ask on the TeX Live mailing list about the bootstrap problem¹ 
(not sure why this didn’t occur to me earlier). It turns out it’s not a 
real circular dependency, it just appears so because of Guix packaging.

It’s possible to build texlive-latex-l3kernel with IniTeX (i.e., by calling 
`pdftex -ini` or `tex -ini`) and docstrip, without any format loaded.

So I made some changes to texlive-build-system to that, and it worked. By 
which I mean: the texlive-latex-l3kernel package builds, and the texlive-
latex-base build is attempted and fails in the same way as it was failing
when I sent the last email, when generating latex formats. I think I’m 
missing some file(s) with definitions for LaTeX macros, but I don’t know yet.

I pushed a new branch “bug-48064-texlive-2021-l3kernel-initex” to my GitLab 
repo at https://gitlab.com/bauermann/guix.git with two patches implementing 
the new approach.

-- 
Thanks,
Thiago

¹ https://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2021-June/047156.html