Re: Saving space...

> 50-60 is not 912.  You mean collections, 

yes, sorry, I meant collections

> so there is overlap.
eh? why?

>   Not
> something which you could easily package in that form.

we could package each TeX Live collection as a Debian package
tomorrow, for example. what stops me is a) no time, and b) the
undefined base of teTeX on all Debian systems

> It would be more important to merge TeXLive/teTeX and CTAN: if we
> have a package description on CTAN, TeXLive and teTeX should just be
> able to pull the stuff in and install it.

which is exactly where we are going with the effort known as "tpm2".
if you look on CTAN in tools/tpm2, you'll find an initial
hack at this, covering just under 1000 packages.

> And if people don't want to have too many package installers, it
> should be reasonably easy to make a tpmtospec script that can be used
> for cranking out rpm.
> 
> CTAN servers generate .tar.gz archives on the fly, why not also .rpm,
> .deb and BSD ports?

I agree. eminently plausible.

> Probably because we can spell "security hole" and "performance hog"
> in capital letters, then.
details, details.....
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