[4023] in Release_7.7_team
Re: Plan for moving tetex to a locker
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Cattey)
Sun Sep 21 02:26:30 2003
Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 02:26:26 -0400
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Cc: William Cattey <wdc@mit.edu>, release-team@mit.edu
To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@mit.edu>
From: William Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
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What can we offer laptop Athena users of 9.3 so that they'll be able to
run TeX when disconnected?
-wdc
On Sunday, September 21, 2003, at 01:31 AM, Greg Hudson wrote:
> tex doesn't really fit in the release because:
>
> * It's big, and most of the bulk is data files which can be shared
> between platforms.
>
> * It takes a long time to build, and a lot of the build time is
> creating data files which can be shared between platforms.
>
> * It has a big compressed tarfile of data files, which CVS can't
> version well.
>
> * It likes to put symlinks in both its source tarfile and its data
> tarfile, and CVS can't deal with those.
>
> * It likes to install utilities with generic-looking names like
> "access" and "readlink", which the release is cleaner without.
>
> * When we make big upgrades, we frequently break things, which means
> leaving the old version around for users to run is good. We can
> do that more easily with lockers.
>
> * Lockers would allow us to more easily delegate maintenance to tex
> experts who aren't members of our team, like we've done in the
> past with the gnu locker. I don't think there is currently anyone
> we'd want to delegate control to, but in the past there have been
> people like amu who were both more motivated and more able to
> maintain a tex installation than we were. That situation might
> arise again in the future.
>
> Here is my plan for the locker setup:
>
> * We build and maintain lockers with names like tetex-2.0.4, using
> RCS to maintain the sources.
>
> * We seize control of the tex locker (currently owned by cfields and
> bert) and fill it with attachandrun scripts pointing at
> tetex-2.0.4. If we build a newer version of tetex or a different
> distribution of tex, we can update those attachandrun scripts.
>
> * For the next full release (9.3), we replace our tetex installation
> with attachandrun scripts in the release pointing at the tex
> locker.
>
> I have prepared a tetex-2.0.4 locker as a proof of concept. I'm
> guessing it should move to the athena cell before this plan goes live,
> but that can be done with a volume dump since there are no AFS path
> references in the locker.
>
> I believe this plan will take negligible effort and will significantly
> reduce our time spent maintaining the tex installation, as well as the
> size of the release. Setting up the tetex-2.0.4 locker was a snap.
