The Debian TeX sub-policy
Footnotes

1

This is new, and the basic TeX packages currently transition their files to the new place.

2

Reasons include hardcoded paths in executables as well as the need for e.g. pool files to exactly match the binaries' version, so that shadowing must be prevented.

3

Of course this is only a problem if the file is needed in the configure phase. If it is needed only at runtime, a README file to instruct the local admin should be sufficient.

4

Per default, this tree is located in the world-writeable directory /tmp/texfonts/, in order to allow automatic package builds to work without user directories. On multi user systems, the admin might want to change this to a persistent directory and set up proper permissions

5

A wishlist bug on the shadowing package, blocked by an other wishlist bug on the basic TeX package, can help tracking these issues.

6

This allows users to say texdoc packagename directly. Otherwise they will first have to find the right command line (e.g. texdoc packagename/user.dvi) using texdoc -s keyword

7

Note that in texmf.cnf, as well as in the sequence of multiple texmf.cnf files that are read, earlier entries override later ones.

8

Filenames starting with 10 are reserved for the Basic TeX packages. However, sorting order is actually only relevant for snippets for texmf.cnf, fmtutil.cnf and language.dat.

9

However, update-updmap uses libkpathsea only in user-specific-mode. In system-wide mode, it doesn't matter whether libkpathsea is configured or not.

10

An update-updmap call could take place if another package such as tetex-bin is configured in the meantime. That happens sometimes with APT.

11

The reason is that, in order to avoid other problems, update-fmtutil ignores files in /etc/texmf/fmt.d that have a corresponding .dpkg-new file, and that it is necessary to recreate all formats when pool files or engines are updated. Thus, some Basic TeX packages call fmtutil --all in their postinst scripts. When Basic TeX packages are upgraded together while a package that loads latex.fmt is installed and configured, then one of the Basic TeX packages' postinst will call update-fmtutil and fmtutil --all while others are is still unconfigured and have .dpkg-new files. Consequently, no format information for e.g. LaTeX is available, and the generation of the format that wants to load it would fail. However, since all files needed to create e.g. latex.fmt are available, the depending format can \input latex.ini and create its own format without problems.

The Debian TeX sub-policy