Bug#379089: tex-common: unclear wording of debconf messages, assumes wrongly mktex.cnf has been created by a knowing admin
Package: tex-common
Version: 0.25
Severity: normal
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Today, when upgrading my unstable box, I got a debconf message
> from the package tex-common, to wit:
> “The mechanism of TeX font caching has changed, requiring the
> installation of /usr/share/texmf/web2c/mktex.cnf. On your
> system, /etc/texmf/web2c/mktex.cnf exists with possible local
> changes, and makes the new file invisible to TeX. Font
> caching might not work until the setting of MT_FEATURES has
> been transferred to your configuration file.”
>
> What does this imply? Why are configuration files (I am
> assuming that something called mktex.cnf is actually a configuration
> file) being installed in /usr/share/?
Because of this paragraph from the TeX Policy Draft:
,---- 4.1 Configuration files
| In a TeX system, in principle every TeX input file can be changed to
| change the behavior of the system, and thus be regarded as a
| configuration file. To prevent inflation of configuration files,
| packages should not install any TeX input files as conffiles or
| configuration files. Instead, they should create an empty directory
| below /etc/texmf/tex and advice users which files are likely places
| for configuration. It is up to the local admin or individual user to
| place changed copies in TEXMFSYSCONFIG or TEXMFCONFIG, respectively.
`----
> What exactly is the usewr
> supposed to do, anyway? If nothing, why is there a debconf notice?
We expected that /etc/texmf/web2c/mktex.cnf will never exist on a system
unless the local admin has deliberately created it. So this debconf
message is targetted at people who already now how to change the TeX
system by placing files in appropriate directories below /etc/texmf, and
thus also how to deal with the situation.
Well, it seems there are other reasons why this file can exist. Without
exactly looking at the code, one place that we forgot comes to my mind:
The texconfig-sys utility. If this is used to change the system
configuration, it will create files in TEXMFSYSCONFIG.
So far for the general reasons, so far no conclusion.
What's the content of the file on your system? Do you remember having
made any changes to the TeX system, maybe with the texconfig utility?
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
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