Beyond Linux® From Scratch (systemd edition) - Version 7.10

Chapter 53. Typesetting

texlive-20160523b-source

Introduction to TeX Live from source

Most of TeX Live can be built from source without a pre-existing installation, but xindy (for indexing) needs working versions of latex and pdflatex when configure is run, and the testsuite and install for asy (for vector graphics) will fail if TeX has not already been installed. Additionally, biber is not provided within the texlive source.

All of those packages are dealt with on their own pages and can be built after installing this package. If you have not already done so, you should start at Setting the PATH for TeX Live so that the final commands to initialise the new installation will be found.

This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS-7.10 platform.

Package Information

Required Additional Downloads

Much of the texlive environment (including scripts, documentation, fonts and various other files) is not part of the source tarball. You must download it separately. This will give you all of the additional files which are provided by a full install of the binary version, there is no realistic way to restrict which parts get installed.

Because of the size of this package, it is unlikely to be mirrored by BLFS mirrors. In case of difficulty, go to http://www.ctan.org/mirrors/ to find a more-accessible mirror.

TeX Live from source Dependencies

Recommended

ghostscript-9.19 (for dvisvgm - used by asymptote which provides a mathematical coordinate-based framework for technical drawing), X Window System

The source ships with its own versions of many libraries, and will use them unless it is forced to use the system versions. The following are recommended so that the system version will be used: Fontconfig-2.12.1, FreeType-2.6.5, GC-7.6.0, Graphite2-1.3.8, HarfBuzz-1.3.0 (built with graphite2 enabled), ICU-57.1, libpaper-1.1.24+nmu4 (used by at least context and xelatex), libpng-1.6.24, Poppler-0.47.0

Optional

The source ships with its own versions of several libraries which are either not under active development, or only used for limited functionality. If you install these, as with some other optional dependencies in this book you will need to tell configure to use the system versions. GD, t1lib, ZZIPlib, TECkit

Runtime dependencies

Python-2.7.12 is used by many scripts. Ruby-2.3.1 is used by some scripts, mostly within mtx_context which is part of conTeXt, but also for one or two others, such as match_parens, which are generally useful.

User Notes: http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/texlive

Installation of TeX Live

Install TeX Live by running the following commands:

The shared libraries will be installed into a texlive directory. As the root user, add it to your /etc/ld.so.conf: 

cat >> /etc/ld.so.conf << EOF
# Begin texlive 2016 addition

/opt/texlive/2016/lib

# End texlive 2016 addition
EOF
[Note]

Note

From 2015 onwards, a successful install requires some texlive commands to be run as the root user, so we will export the TEXARCH variable to let root use it.

Now, as a normal user: 

export TEXARCH=$(uname -m | sed -e 's/i.86/i386/' -e 's/$/-linux/') &&

patch -Np1 -i ../texlive-20160523b-source-upstream_fixes-1.patch &&

mkdir texlive-build &&
cd texlive-build    &&

../configure                                        \
    --prefix=/opt/texlive/2016                      \
    --bindir=/opt/texlive/2016/bin/$TEXARCH         \
    --datarootdir=/opt/texlive/2016                 \
    --includedir=/opt/texlive/2016/include          \
    --infodir=/opt/texlive/2016/texmf-dist/doc/info \
    --libdir=/opt/texlive/2016/lib                  \
    --mandir=/opt/texlive/2016/texmf-dist/doc/man   \
    --disable-native-texlive-build                  \
    --disable-static --enable-shared                \
    --with-system-cairo                             \
    --with-system-fontconfig                        \
    --with-system-freetype2                         \
    --with-system-gmp                               \
    --with-system-graphite2                         \
    --with-system-harfbuzz                          \
    --with-system-icu                               \
    --with-system-libgs                             \
    --with-system-libpaper                          \
    --with-system-libpng                            \
    --with-system-mpfr                              \
    --with-system-pixman                            \
    --with-system-poppler                           \
    --with-system-xpdf                              \
    --with-system-zlib                              \
    --with-banner-add=" - BLFS" &&

make

To test the results, issue: make check A few tests may SKIP because kpathsea has not yet been installed.

Now, as the root user: 

make install-strip &&
make texlinks &&
ldconfig &&
mkdir -pv /opt/texlive/2016/tlpkg/TeXLive/ &&
install -v -m644 ../texk/tests/TeXLive/* /opt/texlive/2016/tlpkg/TeXLive/
[Note]

Note

Only run make texlinks once. If it is rerun, it can change all the program symlinks so that they point to themselves and are useless.

Now install the additional files as the root user: 

tar -xf ../../texlive-20160523b-texmf.tar.xz -C /opt/texlive/2016 --strip-components=1 &&
pushd /opt/texlive/2016 &&
patch -Np1 -i /sources/texlive-20160523b-texmf-upstream_fixes-1.patch &&
popd

Still as the root user, initialise the new system (the commands fmtutil-sys --all and mtxrun --generate will produce a lot of output): 

mktexlsr &&
fmtutil-sys --all &&
mtxrun --generate

You can now proceed to asymptote-2.38, biber-2.5 and / or xindy-2.5.1 if you wish to install them.

Command Explanations

patch -Np1 -i ../texlive-20160523b-source...: This fixes a segfault in upmendex which was corrected after the source was released and is included in the binary installer.

--prefix=, --bindir=, --datarootdir=, --infodir=, --mandir= ... : these switches ensure that the files installed from source will overwrite any corresponding files previously installed by install-tl-unx so that the alternative methods of installing texlive are consistent..

--includedir=, --libdir= ... : these switches ensure that the libraries and include files will be within the directories for this year's texlive.

--disable-static: This switch prevents installation of static versions of the libraries.

--enable-shared: Use shared versions of libkpathsea, libptexenc, libsynctex, libtexlua52 and libtexluajit.

--with-system-...: Unless this parameter is used, the included versions of these libraries will be statically compiled into the programs which need them. If you decided not to install a recommended library, omit the corresponding switch.

--with-system-xpdf: Uniquely, this parameter has a non-standard meaning, it tells configure to use the system-installed poppler headers and library. Again, omit this if you have not installed poppler.

--without-x: use this if you do not have Xorg installed.

make texlinks : this runs the texlinks.sh script to create symbolic links from formats to engines. In practice, several of the targets such as xetex are now separate binaries and for these it will report "file already exists".

tar -xf texlive-20160523b-texmf.tar.xz -C /opt/texlive/2016 --strip-components=1: the tarball contains the files for the texmf-dist directory, and because of its size we do not want to waste time and space untarring it and then copying the files.

patch -Np1 -i /sources/texlive-20160523b-texmf...: This fixes various problems in epstopdf which were found after the source was released and are included in the binary installer. Because this is applied to the installated texmf (to minimise disk space) it is necessary to point to /sources instead of using ../

install -v -m644 ../texk/tests/TeXLive/* /opt/texlive/2016/tlpkg/TeXLive/: This puts the perl modules TLConfig.pm and TLUtils.pm into the directory where the binary installer puts them - it is at the start of the perl @INC@ PATH within texlive when installed using the above configure switches. Without these modules, texlive is unusable.

mktexlsr: Create an ls-R file which lists what was installed - this is used by kpathsea to find files.

fmtutil-sys --all: This initialises the TeX formats, Metafont bases and Metapost mems.

mtxrun --generate: This initialise the ConTeXt system.

Contents

Installed Programs: Over 300 binaries and symlinks to scripts
Installed Libraries: libkpathsea.so, libptexenc.so, libsynctex.so, libtexlua52.so, libtexluajit.so
Installed Directories: /opt/texlive/2016/bin, /opt/texlive/2016/include, /opt/texlive/2016/lib, /opt/texlive/2016/texmf-dist

Short Descriptions

TeX programs

The programs included in TeX are too numerous to individually list. Please refer to the individual program HTML and PDF pages in the various html, man, or pdf files within the subdirectories of 2016/texmf-dist/. Using texdoc pdflatex ( replace pdflatex with the command name ) may also be useful.

libkpathsea.so

(kpathsearch) exists to look up a file in a list of directories and is used by kpsewhich.

libptexenc.so

is a library for Japanese pTeX (publishing TeX).

libsynctex.so

is the SyncTeX (Synchronize TeXnology) parser library.

libtexlua52.so

provides Lua 5.2, modified for use with LuaTeX.

libtexluajit.so

provides LuaJIT, modified for use with LuaJITTeX.

Last updated on 2016-08-31 10:57:05 -0700