From: Adam Dinwoodie <Adam.Dinwoodie@metaswitch.com>
To: "cygwin@cygwin.com" <cygwin@cygwin.com>
Subject: RE: How to keep a dependency from [continually] appearing in setup
Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2012 11:28:00 -0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CE9C056E12502146A72FD81290379E9A43654F23@ENFIRHMBX1.datcon.co.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <50197B86.9060308@cornell.edu>
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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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2012-08-02 9:16 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2012-07-30 5:33 Wynfield Henman
2012-07-31 22:07 ` Ken Brown
2012-08-01 12:05 ` Ryan Johnson
2012-08-01 13:13 ` Ken Brown
2012-08-01 14:18 ` Ryan Johnson
2012-08-01 16:50 ` Achim Gratz
2012-08-01 18:58 ` Ken Brown
2012-08-02 11:28 ` Adam Dinwoodie [this message]
2012-08-02 12:14 ` Ryan Johnson
2012-08-02 13:19 ` Adam Dinwoodie
2012-08-02 13:40 ` Ken Brown
2012-08-02 14:02 ` Ryan Johnson
2012-08-02 14:53 ` Christopher Faylor
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