Introduction to TeX Live from source
Note
According to https://www.tug.org/historic/
the master site in France only supports ftp and rsync. Now that
ftp is generally deprecated, that page has links to mirrors, some
of which support https, e.g. in Utah and Chemnitz as well as in
China. If you prefer to use a different mirror from the example
links here, you will need to navigate to
systems/historic/texlive/2024 or systems/texlive/2024 as the case
may be.
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 test suite 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 and the version of
dvisvgm in the texlive tree cannot be built if shared system
libraries are used.
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 initialize the new installation will
be found.
Note
Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages
properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most
recent stable versions of the books.
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, as 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. If you are unable to download the files for this
package, go to https://www.ctan.org/mirrors/ to find a
more-accessible mirror.
The tlpdb database is shipped as a separate tarball. The
texdoc program needs
a cache file derived from this (and will create the cache on its
first run).
TeX Live from source Dependencies
Recommended
a graphical
environment
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: Cairo-1.18.2, Fontconfig-2.15.0, FreeType-2.13.3, GC-8.2.8, Graphite2-1.3.14, harfBuzz-10.0.1 (built with graphite2
enabled), ICU-75.1, libpaper-2.2.5 (used by at least context and
xelatex), and libpng-1.6.44
Furthermore, the instructions below assume you are using the layout
described in Setting the PATH for TeX Live.
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
Python2
is used by the unmaintained ebong CTAN module (intended for writing
Bengali in Rapid Roman Format). /usr/bin/python
is also in the shebang line for
the latex-papersize and lilyglyphs scripts, and documentation at
CTAN says both modules have been updated to work with python3. In
pythontex there are scripts to invoke python3 or python2 according
to the system's version of python. Ruby-3.3.5 is used by
two scripts, one is for pTex (Japanese vertical writing) and the
other is match_parens which might be generally useful. The perl
module
Tk, which needs to be run from an X11 session to run the tests
and requires Tk-8.6.15 is used by one of the scripts for ptex
and is needed for texdoctk (a GUI interface for finding
documentation files and opening them with the appropriate viewer).
ps2pdf, from
ghostscript-10.04.0, is used by some
utilities and scripts.
Installation of TeX Live
Install TeX Live by running the following commands:
Caution
If you wish to upgrade to current texlive on an older system where extra
packages (asymptote,
dvisvgm, or xindy) have been installed, you will need to
reinstall those as well as fixing up your PATH
for $TEXLIVE_PREFIX
.
Note
A successful install requires some texlive commands to be run as
the root user, so we will export the TEXARCH variable to let
root
use it.
Now, as a normal user:
export TEXARCH=$(uname -m | sed -e 's/i.86/i386/' -e 's/$/-linux/') &&
patch -Np1 -i ../texlive-20240312-source-upstream_fixes-1.patch &&
mkdir texlive-build &&
cd texlive-build &&
../configure -C \
--prefix=$TEXLIVE_PREFIX \
--bindir=$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/bin/$TEXARCH \
--datarootdir=$TEXLIVE_PREFIX \
--includedir=$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/include \
--infodir=$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/texmf-dist/doc/info \
--libdir=$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/lib \
--mandir=$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/texmf-dist/doc/man \
--disable-native-texlive-build \
--disable-static --enable-shared \
--disable-dvisvgm \
--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-zlib \
--with-banner-add=" - BLFS" &&
make
To test the results, issue: make -k
check. One test psutils.test
is known to fail if using system
libpaper because TeX Live includes old versions of both
psutils and libpaper which result in a difference in the
final decimal places of the psresize test. The libpaper developer does not think this is
significant.
Now, as the root
user:
make install-strip &&
make texlinks &&
mkdir -pv $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/tlpkg/TeXLive/ &&
install -v -m644 ../texk/tests/TeXLive/* $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/tlpkg/TeXLive/ &&
tar -xf ../../texlive-20240312-extra.tar.xz -C $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/tlpkg --strip-components=2
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-20240312-texmf.tar.xz -C $TEXLIVE_PREFIX --strip-components=1
Still as the root
user, initialize
the new system (the command fmtutil-sys --all will produce a
lot of output):
mktexlsr &&
fmtutil-sys --all
To allow Evince-46.3.1 or dvisvgm-3.4.1 to link to
libkpathsea.so
, as the root
user (re)create a symlink from
/usr/lib
:
ln -svf $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/lib/libkpathsea.so{,.6} /usr/lib
Note
TeX Live does not include the source for ConTeXt, only the items
that are at CTAN. Trying to build ConTeXt purely from source on a
BLFS TeX Live system is a niche usage and looks as if it will be
more trouble than it is worth.
If you wish to use ConTeXt with luametatex (most of the old
MKII and MKIV code was removed from TeX Live 2023 by the ConTeXt
developer), starting with the binary (only installing ConTeXt,
753 MB in March 2024) would probably be the easiest way to
bootstrap it. The source for luametatex can be pulled with
git from github
luametatex, compiled with meson and ninja, and installed by
copying to the correct program directory. This should avoid
having to fix all the symlinks etc and also avoid including the
many unrelated parts of texmf-dist. See comments 1 to 5 of
#17823.
You can now proceed to asymptote-2.91, biber-2.20, dvisvgm-3.4.1 and /
or xindy-2.5.1 if you wish to install them.
Command Explanations
-C: creates
config.cache, which saves significant time in a parallel build.
--prefix=
, --bindir=
, --datarootdir=
, and other
“dir”
switches: 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.
--disable-dvisvgm
: As noted
above, the shipped version of dvisvgm, which has modified
configuration files, cannot be built with shared system libraries.
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-20240312-texmf.tar.xz
-C $TEXLIVE_PREFIX --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.
install -v -m644
../texk/tests/TeXLive/*
$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/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 initializes the TeX formats, Metafont bases and Metapost mems.
--without-x
: use this if you do not
have Xorg installed.
There are many other '--disable' or '--without' options. Some of
them such as --without-texinfo
are
accepted but no longer do anything, others will prevent a program
being built - but the far greater amount of space used for the
related items in texmf means there is no obvious benefit from
disabling a few of the programs.
Contents
Installed Programs:
Over 300 binaries and symlinks to
scripts
Installed Libraries:
libkpathsea.so, libptexenc.so,
libsynctex.so, libtexlua52.so, libtexluajit.so
Installed Directories:
$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/bin,
$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/include, $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/lib,
$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/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 2024/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
|