texlive-20230313-source

Introduction to TeX Live from source

[Note]

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/2023 or systems/texlive/2023 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.

This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS 12.0 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.

From the 2019 year, the tlpdb database of the packages within texlive is no-longer installed with the source. But texdoc needs a cache file derived from this (and will create the cache on its first run).

TeX Live from source Dependencies

Recommended

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

Installation of TeX Live

Install TeX Live by running the following commands:

[Caution]

Caution

If you wish to upgrade to current texlive on an older system where extra packages (asymptote, biber, dvisvgm, or xindy) have been installed, you will need to reinstall those as well as fixing up your PATH for $TEXLIVE_PREFIX.

[Note]

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-20230313-source-security_fix-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. Two tests, psutils.test and eptexdir/wcfname are known to fail.

Now, as the root user:

make install-strip &&
/sbin/ldconfig     &&
make texlinks      &&
mkdir -pv                                $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/tlpkg/TeXLive/ &&
install -v -m644 ../texk/tests/TeXLive/* $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/tlpkg/TeXLive/ &&
tar -xf ../../texlive-20230311-tlpdb-full.tar.gz -C $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/tlpkg
[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-20230313-texmf.tar.xz -C $TEXLIVE_PREFIX --strip-components=1

It has been established by Debian that the python scripts in l\atex-make will work with python3, so update them to invoke that by running the following command as the root user:

for F in $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/texmf-dist/scripts/latex-make/*.py ; do
  sed -i 's%/usr/bin/env python%/usr/bin/python3%' $F
done

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-44.3 or dvisvgm-3.1 to link to libkpathsea.so, as the root user (re)create a symlink from /usr/lib:

ln -svf $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/lib/libkpathsea.so /usr/lib
[Note]

Note

TeXLive includes some files for ConTeXt but the source of that is separate and has moved on from using luatex in the previous 'mkiv' version to using luametatex which can be pulled with git from github luametatex. LuaMetaTeX uses meson and ninja, but it does not fit easily into the BLFS layout of TeXLive.

However, with a little extra work 'mkiv' files can still be processed using the files shipped in texmf.

Fixes to use ConTeXt will be removed when the texlive source next has to be updated for either a vulnerability fix which requires backporting luatex changes, or for TeXLive 2024. If you are a BLFS user of ConTeXt you should be prepared to use the latest tag from github (the link is in first paragraph of this Note). Building and installing that to work with a BLFS install of TeXLive will not be a trivial exercise.

The following steps, run as the root user, will create mtxrun and context.

sed -e '/local template=\[\[--ini/s/\(primaryflags%\)\(.*\)/\1 --socket --shell-escape \2/' \
 -e '/local template=\[\[%primaryflags%/s/\(primaryflags%\)\(.*\)/\1 --socket --shell-escape \2/' \
  -i $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/texmf-dist/scripts/context/lua/mtxrun.lua &&

mkdir -pv $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/texmf-var/luatex-cache/context/ &&

ln -sfv /$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/texmf-dist/scripts/context/lua/mtxrun.lua \
        /$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/bin/$TEXARCH/mtxrun &&

cat > $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/bin/$TEXARCH/context << EOF
#!/bin/sh
export TEXMF=$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/texmf-dist;
export TEXMFCNF=$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/texmf-dist/web2c;
export TEXMFCACHE=$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/texmf-var/luatex-cache/context/;
$TEXLIVE_PREFIX/bin/$TEXARCH/mtxrun --script context "\$@"
EOF
chmod -v 0755 $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/bin/$TEXARCH/context

You can now proceed to asymptote-2.86, biber-2.19, dvisvgm-3.1 and / or xindy-2.5.1 if you wish to install them.

Command Explanations

patch -Np1 -i ../texlive-20230313-source-security_fix-1.patch: this updates the luatex source to v1.17.0 to fix security issues.

sed -e '/local template (...)' (...)mtxrun.lua: this makes a change in a texmf-dist script so that ConTeXt can now run with luatex-v1.17.0.

-C: create config.cache, this saves significant time in a parallel build.

--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.

--disable-dvisvgm: As noted above, the shipped version of dvisvgm, which has modified configuration files, cannot be built with shared system libraries.

/sbin/ldconfig: this has to be run here so that make texlinks can use kpsewhich.

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-20230313-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.

mkdir -pv $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/texmf-var/luatex-cache/context/: the context script created after this will not run correctly if this directory is not present.

--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 2023/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