Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: Requiring LaTeX

[Alfredo Portes]

Hi everyone,

I know that probably I am the person of least programming experience 
in the list, but I felt like commenting on this issue.

Axiom should only provide the packages that are "must have" and that the 
user cannot install in their system by themselves. I do not think you 
should convert your make process into a package manager.

If a special version of GCL is required for Axiom, then it should be provided.
But if it falls under the criteria of Noweb, Latex, X, etc, ... that the user can 
install by themselves, then GCL and every other package should be also a dependency. If their are not present then AXIOM is not compiled and the 
error is shown to the user telling them what is needed.

Then you move to another level of providing packages for the different distros
(at least the mayor ones) and use their respective package managers to handle
the dependencies (yum, apt-get, emerge, pacman, (insert your favorite here).

> The new makefiles should be 3/4 documentation. They should discuss
> the design decisions (like separate build trees) based on today's
> understanding so that when the trends change (and they will) the
> next generation knows the why and how of the design. Why is it ok
> to require the user to install GCL but not Latex?

>>But we don't require the user to install GCL - Axiom deliberately
>>includes it in the tree as of now.  We DO require an external install
>>of LaTeX - is the plan to bundle some subset of TeX and LaTeX as well?
>>(I can see this if we have a cl-typesetting type solution since that
>>typesetting logic can also be used in GUI situations as well as
>>literate coding, but I don't think TeX was designed for this type of
>>situation.)

Regards,

Jose Alfredo Perez