Re: Sizes of TL distribution

On Jan 20, 2026 at 17:45:08, Frank Mittelbach <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Am 20.01.26 um 23:55 schrieb Christopher Dimech via tex-live:
>
> >
>
> >> TeX Live needs to have a small basic config + curated collections
>
> >> (e.g. Core Latex Collection) that can be easily added and installed.
>
> >> A small core install that resolves without dependency hell.  A two-tier
>
> >> solution to leverage what Frank described.
>
> >
>
>
> as TLC scheme wouldn't fit that bill, it is curated, but it doesn't
> attempt to be 100% dependency free, that isn't really possible without
> too much restrictions at least at this point in time.
>
> Take for example , the different main classes: article, KOMA and memoir.
> article is used by many other classes as the basis and there a a large
> number of packages that are there for extending article with features.
> Many of them are not compatible with KOMA or memoir because they have
> their own methods for this. But that doesn't mean you should only add
> one of the classes
>
>
Maybe I missed something, but I would define dependency-free to mean that
if package X requires package Y and package X is part of the collection
than package Y must also be part of the collection, and not that any two
packages should work together.

On the fonts front, I think at the very least the AMS math fonts should be
included as part of such a core collection (since they would be a
dependency of amsmath which seems an obvious inclusion).

-dh