Remove dependencies from TeXLive or offer dummy packages?

[Christoph Bier]

Binary package hint: lyx

As long as Ubuntu offers only outdated versions of TeXLive (TL) TL packages shouldn't be dependencies for other packages, e. g. LyX. For several years I do not use Ubuntu's/Debian's TeX distributions (teTeX in the past, TL now) because they have always been outdated (the same was always true for Debian). Therefore many TeX users on Debian and Ubuntu install TeXLive on their own to have a recent TeX installation. But then if they want to install e. g. LyX dpkg wants to install TL again. Of course without a TeX installation LyX doesn't make any sense at all. I don't know how to solve this: A reliable solution for beginners that were left alone if TL wasn't a dependency and a comfortable solution for those who install TL on their own. But the latter shouldn't be left alone either. I tried to install LyX from source but there are so many packages missing to compile it, so I gave up. Maybe you could provide some kind of a dummy package to make the package manager believe the TL packages were already installed? For example as described here: http://texblog.net/latex-archive/linux/kile-texlive-2008-equivs/

It's much more complicated as it seemed at first glance. I built a texlive-dummy and tex-common dummy package and installed them. But /var/lib/dpkg/info/lyx-common.postinst calls update-updmap that does not exist anymore in TL 2009. I created a symlink to updmap but then the postinst script calls update-language that does not exist either. So I really gave up. Any ideas how to solve it?

Best
Christoph

[Apteryx (maxco)]

TexLive is one of those package I regularly need to update when I find bug and need the bugfixes from upstream. I don't really like my system to be using two version of TexLive (say if I want to use lilypond from the repository, it will need texlive-binaries to be installed, even if I have my own TexLive 2010 ready to fulfil the dependencies).

I guess in this case the best way is to just install all of *TeX related stuff from source / contained binaries.

So I second the need for a "custom install providing dependencies here" facility in Synaptic package manager.

[oldmankit (oldmankit)]

This applies to me too.

I installed lyx successfully with "sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends lyx". Great, but it's complaining it can't find document classes. Latex is working fine on my system.

How do I get lyx to recognise the working latex installation? I've already done tools->reconfigure.