texlive-2023 packages for Slackware 15.0
 

Request for links to texlive-2023 packages for Slackware 15.0.

Coming soon.

Thanks for the security update!

What about those extra packages from slackbuilds.org?

https://slackbuilds.org/repository/1.../texlive-docs/
https://slackbuilds.org/repository/1...texlive-extra/

At the time of this writing they still have version numbers matching the replaced package. Do they still work with the the new package? Are they affected by the CVE?

regards Henrik

It appears that the new texlive-2023 package for Slackware64 15.0 does not include a significant number of resources which were present in the previous texlive-2021 package. Examples include bibliographic styles (such as harvard), a bunch of fonts and numerous LaTeX packages, among many others. Is this indicative of an upstream decision to remove a bunch of things from texlive that now must be supplied manually by the user, or has something gone amiss in the package preparation for Slackware64 15.0?

With so many components removed I imagine this will break a lot of existing documents.

These will be updated to match 2023.
Yes, it's two days ago that texlive was updated, and Pat does not maintain the SBo part.
For the most part, yes, but there are inconsistencies and things are missing.
No, it affects the engines, see https://tug.org/~mseven/luatex.html

Please take look at https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...-a-4175714469/ , that's where the removals initially took place. Please report back what you think which removed packages are essential.

Thanks for the pointers. The one package which immediately sticks out to me personally is the harvard bibliographic style. I have a large number of documents which make use of this package which can no longer be compiled out of the box on Slackware 15.0. Two days ago they were fine. Harvard is a reasonably widely used bibliographic style, so it wouldn't surprise me if this affects quite a few people.

Slackware 15.0 is meant to be a stable distribution; users would not expect a security update to break LaTeX files which have worked up to now. I understand that there's a need to reign in the size of packages like texlive and that this will mean that some packages relied on by users will now need to be provided manually. While I'm a little annoyed to find that something I use is on the chopping block in Slackware-current, a line must be drawn in the sand somewhere I guess. However, making such a dramatic change in a supposedly *stable* Slackware version seems to go against everything that a stable distribution is meant to be.

I guess that Slackware 15.0's texlive-extra on SBo will include these removed packages when it is updated for texlive-2023, although in my use case I'll probably just manually grab the harvard style files that I require.

If the change *had* to be made to Slackware 15.0 at this point in its life cycle, a note in the ChangeLog to alert users to this change would have at least provided a clearly visible reason for why the security update has broken previously working LaTeX files. This could have included a suggestion to try SBo's texlive-extra package if previously installed LaTeX packages are found to be no longer available.

To summarise: I can certainly deal with the LaTeX packages I use which are now no longer included in Slackware. However, having these disappear during the lifetime of a stable Slackware branch (15.0) without any notification certainly seems to violate the principle of least surprise.

Or you could stay with the original texlive-2021 if you don't need to run LuaTeX on untrusted files. (I wasn't even aware of the existence of LuaTeX. Only using pdfTeX.)

The next time the texmf-trees get build(this might be for the next release 2024 in the worst case), https://www.ctan.org/pkg/harvard will be there.

I just provided a fix for 2023, maybe there were issues patching texlive 2021, on the other hand 2021 has no upstream support anymore so it might be better to go forward, picking up dozens other(security?) fixes.
Last year after Slackware 15.0 was released, i made some major changes to the texlive packages(lots removed, some were added) to be shipped, that had to be done at some point, and that's more or less what has now landed in slackware 15.0.
Those major changes to the package-list probably won't happen again.

Yes.

That would have been nice, but as the changes are one year old, it probably wasn't that obvious to write a warning.
The package description says which is hopefully enough of a hint to get lost packages back.

It seems as if texlive-extra is now updated at slackbuilds.org, thanks for the good work!

I guess that package had higher priority than texlive-docs as it now provieds some parts that previously was in the Slackware texlive package.

regards Henrik

It could have worked out also for texlive-docs, but didn't, see
https://lists.slackbuilds.org/piperm...ay/028213.html

It's now submitted again, we will see.

After the upgrade to texlive 2023 I was bitten by the absence of esint. I didn't have a chance to test the updated texlive-extra though. Esint is one of the packages LyX treats as "core" (in the sense that it is on of those listed in the "Math Options" table). Considering that LyX is one of the most popular desktop apps using texlive, it might be a good idea to move esint to the core package.

Yes, it's in texlive-extra. I missed wrapfig, datetime, and fmtcount, and got them after installing texlive-extra.

For the next time, i added esint, and esint-type1.

wrapfig wasn't updated for 20 years, there is wrapfig2 as alternative.
For datetime(which depend on fmtcount(needed for something else?), so i didn't add this) there is datetime2 as alternative.
Are these alternatives ok, or are there issues?

Got an error message to move amsmath after wrapfig2, but it seems to work ok after that change.

datetime2 is more difficult for me. A long time ago, I made a new command with datetime, printing a date interval, e.g. \PrintDateInterval{1} prints 4.9.-8.9.2023 for the first week, \PrintDateInterval{2} prints the dates for the second week, and so on. I give a start date of a course in a separate file and weekly documents have dates calculated automatically every year. Doesn't work with datetime2. It is more productive for me to use the old datetime than to rewrite my code... But I don't think the idea of the Slackware texlive base package is to accommodate this kind of use.