How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Wynfield Henman]

I use the in-the-wild, 'texlive 2012' distribution, which I like to
tinker with and customize.
Due to a, what I believe is a dependency by auctex on texlive for some
reason, I keep getting a list of about 10 texlive related packages
automatically appended to what I want to install and I have to keep
manually [skip] them.

I would like to know some efficient way I could make that go away and
just have setup ignore texlive or have it see that I have it already,
but that it's just not a cygwin package, but user installed.

Any an all advice and ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

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Re: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Ken Brown]

On 7/30/2012 1:33 AM, Wynfield Henman wrote:
> I use the in-the-wild, 'texlive 2012' distribution, which I like to
> tinker with and customize.
> Due to a, what I believe is a dependency by auctex on texlive for some
> reason, I keep getting a list of about 10 texlive related packages
> automatically appended to what I want to install and I have to keep
> manually [skip] them.
>
> I would like to know some efficient way I could make that go away and
> just have setup ignore texlive or have it see that I have it already,
> but that it's just not a cygwin package, but user installed.

setup.exe only knows about Cygwin packages.  You might be able to edit 
/etc/setup/installed.db to trick setup.exe into thinking that you've 
installed Cygwin's texlive.

Ken


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Re: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Ryan Johnson]

On 31/07/2012 6:07 PM, Ken Brown wrote:
> On 7/30/2012 1:33 AM, Wynfield Henman wrote:
>> I use the in-the-wild, 'texlive 2012' distribution, which I like to
>> tinker with and customize.
>> Due to a, what I believe is a dependency by auctex on texlive for some
>> reason, I keep getting a list of about 10 texlive related packages
>> automatically appended to what I want to install and I have to keep
>> manually [skip] them.
>>
>> I would like to know some efficient way I could make that go away and
>> just have setup ignore texlive or have it see that I have it already,
>> but that it's just not a cygwin package, but user installed.
>
> setup.exe only knows about Cygwin packages.  You might be able to edit 
> /etc/setup/installed.db to trick setup.exe into thinking that you've 
> installed Cygwin's texlive.
Of course, then it will try to upgrade the non-existent package(s), 
potentially leading to problems down the road...

Seriously, though, there are some surprising dependencies on texlive 
right now (usually via dblatex), and it's a big enough package set 
(several hundred MB download) that it's no surprise lots of people want 
to avoid its being pulled in every other time they run setup.

I don't suppose there's an easy refactoring that could help avoid this 
problem?

Ryan


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Re: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Ken Brown]

On 8/1/2012 8:04 AM, Ryan Johnson wrote:
> On 31/07/2012 6:07 PM, Ken Brown wrote:
>> On 7/30/2012 1:33 AM, Wynfield Henman wrote:
>>> I use the in-the-wild, 'texlive 2012' distribution, which I like to
>>> tinker with and customize.
>>> Due to a, what I believe is a dependency by auctex on texlive for some
>>> reason, I keep getting a list of about 10 texlive related packages
>>> automatically appended to what I want to install and I have to keep
>>> manually [skip] them.
>>>
>>> I would like to know some efficient way I could make that go away and
>>> just have setup ignore texlive or have it see that I have it already,
>>> but that it's just not a cygwin package, but user installed.
>>
>> setup.exe only knows about Cygwin packages.  You might be able to edit
>> /etc/setup/installed.db to trick setup.exe into thinking that you've
>> installed Cygwin's texlive.
> Of course, then it will try to upgrade the non-existent package(s),
> potentially leading to problems down the road...
>
> Seriously, though, there are some surprising dependencies on texlive
> right now (usually via dblatex), and it's a big enough package set
> (several hundred MB download) that it's no surprise lots of people want
> to avoid its being pulled in every other time they run setup.

It's not nearly that big if people just install what they need to be 
able to run latex.  See the recommendations in my last announcement:

   http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2012-07/msg00311.html

I don't know whether dblatex could get by with fewer dependencies. 
Yaakov would have to comment on that.

> I don't suppose there's an easy refactoring that could help avoid this
> problem?

I'm open to suggestions.

Ken


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Re: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Ryan Johnson]

On 01/08/2012 9:13 AM, Ken Brown wrote:
> On 8/1/2012 8:04 AM, Ryan Johnson wrote:
>> On 31/07/2012 6:07 PM, Ken Brown wrote:
>>> On 7/30/2012 1:33 AM, Wynfield Henman wrote:
>>>> I use the in-the-wild, 'texlive 2012' distribution, which I like to
>>>> tinker with and customize.
>>>> Due to a, what I believe is a dependency by auctex on texlive for some
>>>> reason, I keep getting a list of about 10 texlive related packages
>>>> automatically appended to what I want to install and I have to keep
>>>> manually [skip] them.
>>>>
>>>> I would like to know some efficient way I could make that go away and
>>>> just have setup ignore texlive or have it see that I have it already,
>>>> but that it's just not a cygwin package, but user installed.
>>>
>>> setup.exe only knows about Cygwin packages.  You might be able to edit
>>> /etc/setup/installed.db to trick setup.exe into thinking that you've
>>> installed Cygwin's texlive.
>> Of course, then it will try to upgrade the non-existent package(s),
>> potentially leading to problems down the road...
>>
>> Seriously, though, there are some surprising dependencies on texlive
>> right now (usually via dblatex), and it's a big enough package set
>> (several hundred MB download) that it's no surprise lots of people want
>> to avoid its being pulled in every other time they run setup.
>
> It's not nearly that big if people just install what they need to be 
> able to run latex.  See the recommendations in my last announcement:
>
>   http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2012-07/msg00311.html
>
> I don't know whether dblatex could get by with fewer dependencies. 
> Yaakov would have to comment on that.
>
>> I don't suppose there's an easy refactoring that could help avoid this
>> problem?
>
> I'm open to suggestions.
Digging through setup.ini shows only a few notable packages that pull in 
texlive:

texlive
     <- dblatex
         <- gtk-doc
             <- gnome-common
         <- xmlto
     <- emacs-auctex
     <- texemacs.

That's not nearly as many dependencies as I thought, so my initial 
reaction was probably too strong. That said, there might be some room 
for improvement:

It can be argued that emacs-auctex should not pull in texlive. Most 
users installing emacs-auctex will already have some flavor of tex in 
place, and not necessarily the cygwin one (like the OP, or perhaps a 
MikTex user). Plus, the error message is pretty intuitive and the 
solution very simple, if latex is not there: "latex: no such command" 
==> "maybe I should install latex." Therefore, the expected aggregate 
frustration of users who installed auctex without latex available would 
likely be far lower than the aggregate frustration of users wanting to 
install auctex and getting saddled with an unwanted redundant texlive 
distribution (for which there is no easy solution).

Only two packages use dblatex, so it probably makes sense to also 
question why *they* need it.

It makes sense that gtk-doc needs dblatex, *if* the former is used to 
create/update documentation rather than merely supply a pile of info and 
man pages, but if that's the case I'm not convinced that gnome-common 
needs gtk-doc. Relatively few users of gnome-common need to develop 
gnome code, and few developers need to regenerate documentation from 
sources.

I think my own encounter with texlive dependencies came while trying to 
compile some project whose configure script insisted on having xmlto 
available. The package description suggests that xmlto does a lot of 
things that wouldn't require dblatex, but I've never used it before 
(that project really only needed xmlto to regenerate documentation, 
which I didn't do).

I can't comment on texemacs, I've never used it.

Ryan


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Re: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Achim Gratz]

Ryan Johnson writes:
> It can be argued that emacs-auctex should not pull in texlive.

The only "official" TeX available in Cygwin is TeXlive and setup doesn't
support "recommends", so...

> It makes sense that gtk-doc needs dblatex, *if* the former is used to
> create/update documentation rather than merely supply a pile of info
> and man pages, but if that's the case I'm not convinced that
> gnome-common needs gtk-doc. Relatively few users of gnome-common need
> to develop gnome code, and few developers need to regenerate
> documentation from sources.

That suggests there should be something like gtk-doc and gtk-devel.  I
don't know if that is easily done and whether it fits the upstream
packaging scheme.  Gnome has a habit of pulling in lots of baggage on
GNU/Linux distributions, too.

The _real_ solution would be if the "soft" dependencies of a package
could be stubbed out so that when you do need them, they'll request the
installation of whatever is missing.


Regards,
Achim.
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Re: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Ken Brown]

On 8/1/2012 10:18 AM, Ryan Johnson wrote:
> It can be argued that emacs-auctex should not pull in texlive. Most
> users installing emacs-auctex will already have some flavor of tex in
> place, and not necessarily the cygwin one (like the OP, or perhaps a
> MikTex user). Plus, the error message is pretty intuitive and the
> solution very simple, if latex is not there: "latex: no such command"
> ==> "maybe I should install latex." Therefore, the expected aggregate

There's more to it than that.  emacs-auctex installs stuff needed for 
its preview feature in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/preview/.  This won't 
be found by native texlive or by MikTeX.

> frustration of users who installed auctex without latex available would
> likely be far lower than the aggregate frustration of users wanting to
> install auctex and getting saddled with an unwanted redundant texlive
> distribution (for which there is no easy solution).

Why is this so frustrating?  It doesn't do any harm (except waste a 
small amount of disk space) to install Cygwin's texlive in parallel with 
native texlive.  Just make sure the bin directory of the latter precedes 
/usr/bin in PATH.  I myself have both installed, since I sometimes find 
it useful for testing purposes to be able to switch from one to the 
other (by temporarily changing PATH).

Ken

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RE: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Adam Dinwoodie]

Ken Brown wrote:
>On 8/1/2012 10:18 AM, Ryan Johnson wrote:
>> It can be argued that emacs-auctex should not pull in texlive. Most
>> users installing emacs-auctex will already have some flavor of tex in
>> place, and not necessarily the cygwin one (like the OP, or perhaps a
>> MikTex user). Plus, the error message is pretty intuitive and the
>> solution very simple, if latex is not there: "latex: no such command"
>> ==> "maybe I should install latex." Therefore, the expected aggregate
>
>There's more to it than that.  emacs-auctex installs stuff needed for
>its preview feature in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/preview/.  This won't
>be found by native texlive or by MikTeX.
>
>> frustration of users who installed auctex without latex available would
>> likely be far lower than the aggregate frustration of users wanting to
>> install auctex and getting saddled with an unwanted redundant texlive
>> distribution (for which there is no easy solution).
>
>Why is this so frustrating?  It doesn't do any harm (except waste a
>small amount of disk space) to install Cygwin's texlive in parallel with
>native texlive.  Just make sure the bin directory of the latter precedes
>/usr/bin in PATH.  I myself have both installed, since I sometimes find
>it useful for testing purposes to be able to switch from one to the
>other (by temporarily changing PATH).

I'd draw a parallel between the emacs-auctex's dependency on latex and libX11's
dependency on xorg-server: while xorg-server is certainly the preferred X
server for Cygwin, it's not the only option[0].

[0]: http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2012-02/msg00602.html

I've no particular preference for whether one package includes another that is
a "soft" dependency, but I do think it's important to maintain consistency.
Either dependencies where some users are likely to want to use non-Cygwin tools
should be installed regardless, or they should not, and that should be applied
across the board.

Inconsistency harms least astonishment, and harming least astonishment makes me
very sad.

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Re: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Ryan Johnson]

On 02/08/2012 5:14 AM, Adam Dinwoodie wrote:
> Inconsistency harms least astonishment, and harming least astonishment 
> makes me very sad. 
While I agree with you completely, http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#MSFTEU. 
Maybe they can make an exception "just this once" ...


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RE: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Adam Dinwoodie]

Ryan Johnson wrote:
>On 02/08/2012 5:14 AM, Adam Dinwoodie wrote:
>> Inconsistency harms least astonishment, and harming least astonishment
>> makes me very sad.
>While I agree with you completely, http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#MSFTEU.
>Maybe they can make an exception "just this once" ...

Aha! How did I miss that one!?

But unless we're occasionally consistent, we'll be consistently inconsistent,
and users will consistently expect our consistence to be inconsistent, with a
consistent result of unsurprised users when their Cygwin experience
consistently consists of inconsistencies.

Okay, I'll stop now.

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Re: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Ken Brown]

On 8/2/2012 5:14 AM, Adam Dinwoodie wrote:
> Ken Brown wrote:
>> On 8/1/2012 10:18 AM, Ryan Johnson wrote:
>>> It can be argued that emacs-auctex should not pull in texlive. Most
>>> users installing emacs-auctex will already have some flavor of tex in
>>> place, and not necessarily the cygwin one (like the OP, or perhaps a
>>> MikTex user). Plus, the error message is pretty intuitive and the
>>> solution very simple, if latex is not there: "latex: no such command"
>>> ==> "maybe I should install latex." Therefore, the expected aggregate
>>
>> There's more to it than that.  emacs-auctex installs stuff needed for
>> its preview feature in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/preview/.  This won't
>> be found by native texlive or by MikTeX.
>>
>>> frustration of users who installed auctex without latex available would
>>> likely be far lower than the aggregate frustration of users wanting to
>>> install auctex and getting saddled with an unwanted redundant texlive
>>> distribution (for which there is no easy solution).
>>
>> Why is this so frustrating?  It doesn't do any harm (except waste a
>> small amount of disk space) to install Cygwin's texlive in parallel with
>> native texlive.  Just make sure the bin directory of the latter precedes
>> /usr/bin in PATH.  I myself have both installed, since I sometimes find
>> it useful for testing purposes to be able to switch from one to the
>> other (by temporarily changing PATH).
>
> I'd draw a parallel between the emacs-auctex's dependency on latex and libX11's
> dependency on xorg-server: while xorg-server is certainly the preferred X
> server for Cygwin, it's not the only option[0].
>
> [0]: http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2012-02/msg00602.html

The situations aren't parallel.  Cygwin's libX11 will work with X 
servers other than xorg-server.  But Cygwin's emacs-auctex, as I 
explained above, will not work OOTB with tex installations other than 
Cygwin's texlive.  The preview feature will be broken.

Users who prefer a different tex installation and want to use auctex 
should build and install auctex themselves.  During installation, auctex 
will find the appropriate texmf tree and put its preview files there.

Ken


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Re: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Ryan Johnson]

On 02/08/2012 9:18 AM, Ken Brown wrote:
> On 8/2/2012 5:14 AM, Adam Dinwoodie wrote:
>> Ken Brown wrote:
>>> On 8/1/2012 10:18 AM, Ryan Johnson wrote:
>>>> It can be argued that emacs-auctex should not pull in texlive. Most
>>>> users installing emacs-auctex will already have some flavor of tex in
>>>> place, and not necessarily the cygwin one (like the OP, or perhaps a
>>>> MikTex user). Plus, the error message is pretty intuitive and the
>>>> solution very simple, if latex is not there: "latex: no such command"
>>>> ==> "maybe I should install latex." Therefore, the expected aggregate
>>>
>>> There's more to it than that.  emacs-auctex installs stuff needed for
>>> its preview feature in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/preview/. This won't
>>> be found by native texlive or by MikTeX.
>>>
>>>> frustration of users who installed auctex without latex available 
>>>> would
>>>> likely be far lower than the aggregate frustration of users wanting to
>>>> install auctex and getting saddled with an unwanted redundant texlive
>>>> distribution (for which there is no easy solution).
>>>
>>> Why is this so frustrating?  It doesn't do any harm (except waste a
>>> small amount of disk space) to install Cygwin's texlive in parallel 
>>> with
>>> native texlive.  Just make sure the bin directory of the latter 
>>> precedes
>>> /usr/bin in PATH.  I myself have both installed, since I sometimes find
>>> it useful for testing purposes to be able to switch from one to the
>>> other (by temporarily changing PATH).
>>
>> I'd draw a parallel between the emacs-auctex's dependency on latex 
>> and libX11's
>> dependency on xorg-server: while xorg-server is certainly the 
>> preferred X
>> server for Cygwin, it's not the only option[0].
>>
>> [0]: http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2012-02/msg00602.html
>
> The situations aren't parallel.  Cygwin's libX11 will work with X 
> servers other than xorg-server.  But Cygwin's emacs-auctex, as I 
> explained above, will not work OOTB with tex installations other than 
> Cygwin's texlive.  The preview feature will be broken.
>
> Users who prefer a different tex installation and want to use auctex 
> should build and install auctex themselves.  During installation, 
> auctex will find the appropriate texmf tree and put its preview files 
> there.
Fair enough. I was just throwing the idea out there in case it made 
sense to the people who know what's going on. Sound like it doesn't make 
sense to remove that dependency.

Ryan


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Re: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup

[Christopher Faylor]

On Thu, Aug 02, 2012 at 09:14:14AM +0000, Adam Dinwoodie wrote:
>Ken Brown wrote:
>>On 8/1/2012 10:18 AM, Ryan Johnson wrote:
>>> It can be argued that emacs-auctex should not pull in texlive. Most
>>> users installing emacs-auctex will already have some flavor of tex in
>>> place, and not necessarily the cygwin one (like the OP, or perhaps a
>>> MikTex user). Plus, the error message is pretty intuitive and the
>>> solution very simple, if latex is not there: "latex: no such command"
>>> ==> "maybe I should install latex." Therefore, the expected aggregate
>>
>>There's more to it than that.  emacs-auctex installs stuff needed for
>>its preview feature in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/preview/.  This won't
>>be found by native texlive or by MikTeX.
>>
>>> frustration of users who installed auctex without latex available would
>>> likely be far lower than the aggregate frustration of users wanting to
>>> install auctex and getting saddled with an unwanted redundant texlive
>>> distribution (for which there is no easy solution).
>>
>>Why is this so frustrating?  It doesn't do any harm (except waste a
>>small amount of disk space) to install Cygwin's texlive in parallel with
>>native texlive.  Just make sure the bin directory of the latter precedes
>>/usr/bin in PATH.  I myself have both installed, since I sometimes find
>>it useful for testing purposes to be able to switch from one to the
>>other (by temporarily changing PATH).
>
>I'd draw a parallel between the emacs-auctex's dependency on latex and libX11's
>dependency on xorg-server: while xorg-server is certainly the preferred X
>server for Cygwin, it's not the only option[0].
>
>[0]: http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2012-02/msg00602.html

That is not the same thing at all.  You can run xterm on your Windows
box without an X server.  It's not the same as suggesting that a package
dependency which could theoretically be solved by installing a
non-cygwin package should be accommodated or encouraged by a cygwin
package.

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