Discussion:
[tex-live] "why is tex live so big"
Robin Fairbairns
2012-10-22 11:25:51 UTC
Permalink
a speaker at the uk tug meeting on saturday (talking about tex-on-
raspberry-pi[*]) had a moan about the size of tex live. not
unreasonable in that context, really...

thinking about it on my way home (a slow journey) i decided it might be
useful to provide an answer in the faq (ignoring the fact that no newbie
is likely to look at the faq, but at least it would be a useful link to
give to people who were having trouble).

in the discussion in the meeting, several "obvious" things were touched
on: don't retain the package files, don't keep a source tree. some
suggested not to retain the documentation, though that (imho) is a
dangerous.

does anyone here have any other tricks. for example, is the
auto-downloader texliveonfly a reasonable recommendation, in the sense
of "install a minimal tl, and populate it as you go along"? (the
corresponding thing is quite a good answer for miktex users, but i've no
experience of texliveonfly.)

robin
who may one day soon be releasing a new faq with a new meaningless
version number

[*] cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
Zdenek Wagner
2012-10-22 11:34:02 UTC
Permalink
Post by Robin Fairbairns
a speaker at the uk tug meeting on saturday (talking about tex-on-
raspberry-pi[*]) had a moan about the size of tex live. not
unreasonable in that context, really...
There were several attempts to make installed TeX Live smaller. I do
not remember the exact results of my analysis but I found that the
size can only be reduced by not installing the documentation. All
binaries, scripts, style files, fonts etc are small, only the
documentation tree is large. You can easily try "du" if you have
scheme-full installed. If someone does not have enough space on a disk
but fast internet connection, it may be useful not to install
documentation but view it on the web.
Post by Robin Fairbairns
thinking about it on my way home (a slow journey) i decided it might be
useful to provide an answer in the faq (ignoring the fact that no newbie
is likely to look at the faq, but at least it would be a useful link to
give to people who were having trouble).
in the discussion in the meeting, several "obvious" things were touched
on: don't retain the package files, don't keep a source tree. some
suggested not to retain the documentation, though that (imho) is a
dangerous.
does anyone here have any other tricks. for example, is the
auto-downloader texliveonfly a reasonable recommendation, in the sense
of "install a minimal tl, and populate it as you go along"? (the
corresponding thing is quite a good answer for miktex users, but i've no
experience of texliveonfly.)
robin
who may one day soon be releasing a new faq with a new meaningless
version number
[*] cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
--
Zden?k Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz
Martin Schröder
2012-10-22 17:03:52 UTC
Permalink
Post by Zdenek Wagner
size can only be reduced by not installing the documentation. All
binaries, scripts, style files, fonts etc are small, only the
<cough>cmsuper</cough>
Post by Zdenek Wagner
du -k --max-depth=1 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/|sort -rn
2958292 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/
1326012 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/doc
1117276 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/fonts
238652 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/source
216424 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/tex

Fonts are _not_ small.

KerTeX tries to be a small TeX distribution.

Best
Martin
Reinhard Kotucha
2012-10-22 22:37:17 UTC
Permalink
Post by Martin Schröder
Post by Zdenek Wagner
size can only be reduced by not installing the documentation. All
binaries, scripts, style files, fonts etc are small, only the
<cough>cmsuper</cough>
Sure, cmsuper is huge, but AFAIK it contains fonts not supported by
Latin Modern. I've seen many documents using cmsuper. I'm not sure
whether this is always intended, maybe they are loaded by some macro
packages. However, I fear that if cmsuper is removed, we will be
bothered by many PDF files containing bitmap fonts instead.
Post by Martin Schröder
Post by Zdenek Wagner
du -k --max-depth=1 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/|sort -rn
2958292 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/
1326012 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/doc
1117276 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/fonts
238652 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/source
216424 /opt/tex/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/tex
Fonts are _not_ small.
I suppose you mean "the fonts tree isn't small".

Actually, fonts are not large. But TeX Live provides many of them.
Since I'm working on a multi-platform installation, I'm glad that TL
provides so many fonts. System fonts are useless in my environment.
Post by Martin Schröder
KerTeX tries to be a small TeX distribution.
It claims to be small. It provides cmsuper as well. <cough> :)

A small distribution is always based on assumptions about what users
need. And these assumptions are almost always wrong. If people like
KerTeX, they will ask to add this or that package and finally KerTeX
will either die or be as large as TeX Live. It's wasted time, the
proper way to create a small TeX distribution is to provide a TeX Live
installation scheme.

Regards,
Reinhard
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhard Kotucha Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Khaled Hosny
2012-10-22 22:47:04 UTC
Permalink
Post by Reinhard Kotucha
Post by Martin Schröder
KerTeX tries to be a small TeX distribution.
It claims to be small. It provides cmsuper as well. <cough> :)
A small distribution is always based on assumptions about what users
need. And these assumptions are almost always wrong. If people like
KerTeX, they will ask to add this or that package and finally KerTeX
will either die or be as large as TeX Live.
Can't agree more. I'm pretty sure there is a name for this not uncommon
software development phenomenon.

Regards,
Khaled
Paulo Roberto Massa Cereda
2012-10-22 23:15:25 UTC
Permalink
Post by Khaled Hosny
Can't agree more. I'm pretty sure there is a name for this not uncommon
software development phenomenon.
There is. :) The most common name I know for this phenomenon is "Feature
creep", but apparently there are other similar names as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep

Paulo
Khaled Hosny
2012-10-23 04:23:52 UTC
Permalink
Post by Paulo Roberto Massa Cereda
Post by Khaled Hosny
Can't agree more. I'm pretty sure there is a name for this not uncommon
software development phenomenon.
There is. :) The most common name I know for this phenomenon is
"Feature creep", but apparently there are other similar names as
well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep
No, I'm referring to people who see a mature but complex system and say:
I can redo it in a less complex way, but by the time it provides the
same features (which, after all, turn to be necessary) it becomes as
complex as the system it was set to replace.

Regards,
Khaled
Paulo Roberto Massa Cereda
2012-10-23 09:07:24 UTC
Permalink
Post by Khaled Hosny
I can redo it in a less complex way, but by the time it provides the
same features (which, after all, turn to be necessary) it becomes as
complex as the system it was set to replace.
oops, sorry. :) I can't think of a specific term for it. I thought of
"wishful thinking", but it doesn't seem to fit here. :)

Paulo
Reinhard Kotucha
2012-10-22 21:28:08 UTC
Permalink
Post by Robin Fairbairns
a speaker at the uk tug meeting on saturday (talking about tex-on-
raspberry-pi[*]) had a moan about the size of tex live. not
unreasonable in that context, really...
Hi Robin,
first a remark regarding the Raspberry Pi. I only have a 4GB SD card,
which isn't sufficient for TeX Live. However, "disk" size can easily
be extended with USB sticks. They should contain an ext2 filesystem
at least in order to support symlinks. An 8GB stick is sufficient,
TeX Live consumes 5.4GB. The stick is permanently mounted here, just
like a hard drive. If both USB ports are needed for keyboard and
mouse (I'm using ssh instead), a USB hub is necessary. The package
leaflet recommends not to power the device from a USB port of a PC
because the PC can be damaged. So I suppose that a USB hub with
built-in power supply is already available.
Post by Robin Fairbairns
thinking about it on my way home (a slow journey) i decided it
might be useful to provide an answer in the faq (ignoring the fact
that no newbie is likely to look at the faq, but at least it would
be a useful link to give to people who were having trouble).
Maybe the Raspberry Pi web site could explain how to extend disk
space. I suppose that most people don't consider USB sticks because
they are shipped with an unsuitable file system, but with mke2fs(8)
it's easy enough to make a USB stick behave like a Unix hard drive.
Post by Robin Fairbairns
in the discussion in the meeting, several "obvious" things were
touched on: don't retain the package files, don't keep a source
tree. some suggested not to retain the documentation, though that
(imho) is a dangerous.
The TeX Live installer has options for disabling the doc and source
tree. tlmgr has an option to turn autobackups off. An unfortunate
thing is that the .tar.xz are retained until installation is complete.
The solution is to install TL on a PC and then copy the tree to the
Raspberry.

BTW, there was a discussion some time ago on de.comp.text.tex when
someone intended to write a book about the new engines (XeTeX, LuaTeX)
which should be accompanied with a CD containing a minimal subset of
TeX Live. It turned out that it's extremely difficult to decide what
can be omitted. I played with the collections menu of the installer
but I didn't find out what safely could be omitted in order to
decrease the size significantly (or even noticeably).
Post by Robin Fairbairns
does anyone here have any other tricks. for example, is the
auto-downloader texliveonfly a reasonable recommendation, in the
sense of "install a minimal tl, and populate it as you go along"?
(the corresponding thing is quite a good answer for miktex users,
but i've no experience of texliveonfly.)
I don't have any experience with texliveonfly either, but I already
found MiKTeX's auto-downloader a bit annoying when I tried to
demonstrate people something and many packages had to be installed
on-the-fly. On a Raspberry Pi everything is even *much* slower and I
can't imagine that anybody will be really happy with it.

I'm just running "tlmgr update --all" on my Raspberry Pi:

[ 27/142, 25:54/03:09:51] update: gfsbodoni [977k] (19440 -> 27976) ... done

Three hours with autobackups disabled. I can't imagine that anybody
will be happy with an auto-downloader. Most likely lzma
de-compression consumes an enormous amount of CPU time.

I can only recommend to extend disk space. I payed 10? for a 16GB
stick but for a complete TeX Live 8GB are sufficient.

Regards,
Reinhard
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhard Kotucha Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zdenek Wagner
2012-10-22 22:01:22 UTC
Permalink
Post by Reinhard Kotucha
Post by Robin Fairbairns
a speaker at the uk tug meeting on saturday (talking about tex-on-
raspberry-pi[*]) had a moan about the size of tex live. not
unreasonable in that context, really...
Hi Robin,
first a remark regarding the Raspberry Pi. I only have a 4GB SD card,
which isn't sufficient for TeX Live. However, "disk" size can easily
be extended with USB sticks. They should contain an ext2 filesystem
at least in order to support symlinks. An 8GB stick is sufficient,
TeX Live consumes 5.4GB. The stick is permanently mounted here, just
like a hard drive. If both USB ports are needed for keyboard and
mouse (I'm using ssh instead), a USB hub is necessary. The package
leaflet recommends not to power the device from a USB port of a PC
because the PC can be damaged. So I suppose that a USB hub with
built-in power supply is already available.
Yes, they exist. Even some modern monitors contain such hubs built in.
Post by Reinhard Kotucha
Post by Robin Fairbairns
thinking about it on my way home (a slow journey) i decided it
might be useful to provide an answer in the faq (ignoring the fact
that no newbie is likely to look at the faq, but at least it would
be a useful link to give to people who were having trouble).
Maybe the Raspberry Pi web site could explain how to extend disk
space. I suppose that most people don't consider USB sticks because
they are shipped with an unsuitable file system, but with mke2fs(8)
it's easy enough to make a USB stick behave like a Unix hard drive.
I regularly use ext3 on USB sticks and USB hard disks. I have been
doing it for years.
Post by Reinhard Kotucha
Post by Robin Fairbairns
in the discussion in the meeting, several "obvious" things were
touched on: don't retain the package files, don't keep a source
tree. some suggested not to retain the documentation, though that
(imho) is a dangerous.
The TeX Live installer has options for disabling the doc and source
tree. tlmgr has an option to turn autobackups off. An unfortunate
thing is that the .tar.xz are retained until installation is complete.
The solution is to install TL on a PC and then copy the tree to the
Raspberry.
BTW, there was a discussion some time ago on de.comp.text.tex when
someone intended to write a book about the new engines (XeTeX, LuaTeX)
which should be accompanied with a CD containing a minimal subset of
TeX Live. It turned out that it's extremely difficult to decide what
can be omitted. I played with the collections menu of the installer
but I didn't find out what safely could be omitted in order to
decrease the size significantly (or even noticeably).
Post by Robin Fairbairns
does anyone here have any other tricks. for example, is the
auto-downloader texliveonfly a reasonable recommendation, in the
sense of "install a minimal tl, and populate it as you go along"?
(the corresponding thing is quite a good answer for miktex users,
but i've no experience of texliveonfly.)
I don't have any experience with texliveonfly either, but I already
found MiKTeX's auto-downloader a bit annoying when I tried to
demonstrate people something and many packages had to be installed
on-the-fly. On a Raspberry Pi everything is even *much* slower and I
can't imagine that anybody will be really happy with it.
[ 27/142, 25:54/03:09:51] update: gfsbodoni [977k] (19440 -> 27976) ... done
Three hours with autobackups disabled. I can't imagine that anybody
will be happy with an auto-downloader. Most likely lzma
de-compression consumes an enormous amount of CPU time.
This is not good news :-(
Anyway, I hope I will find time to buy Raspberry PI and experiment with it.
Post by Reinhard Kotucha
I can only recommend to extend disk space. I payed 10 EURO for a 16GB
stick but for a complete TeX Live 8GB are sufficient.
Regards,
Reinhard
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhard Kotucha Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Zden?k Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz
Karl Berry
2012-10-22 23:22:05 UTC
Permalink
You can get any size installed TeX Live that you want. That's what
installation schemes are for. No tricks needed. People just shouldn't
complain when the things they need aren't there (but they always do).

karl
Robin Fairbairns
2012-10-22 23:49:41 UTC
Permalink
Post by Reinhard Kotucha
Post by Martin Schröder
Post by Zdenek Wagner
size can only be reduced by not installing the documentation. All
binaries, scripts, style files, fonts etc are small, only the
<cough>cmsuper</cough>
Sure, cmsuper is huge, but AFAIK it contains fonts not supported by
Latin Modern. I've seen many documents using cmsuper. I'm not sure
whether this is always intended, maybe they are loaded by some macro
packages. However, I fear that if cmsuper is removed, we will be
bothered by many PDF files containing bitmap fonts instead.
cm-super is a sledgehammer approach to the problem of cork encoding.

it does the required job, but the point is, "is it necessary". i really
don't know, but it would be interesting to have other people's views.

(note that i know about the problem of bitmapped fonts, in the absence
of the type1 versions ... but cmsuper isn't the only solution to that
problem.)

robin
trying to keep an open mind here....
simon
2012-10-23 07:37:52 UTC
Permalink
Post by Robin Fairbairns
a speaker at the uk tug meeting on saturday (talking about tex-on-
raspberry-pi[*]) had a moan about the size of tex live. not
unreasonable in that context, really...
The obesity of texlive isn't too bad, even on the RPi, cos of Moores Law. By
the time we were to finish addressing the issue the then current disk space
will easily accommodate the stuff about which we were whinging earlier.

I started my RPi with 4GB SD, decided it wasn't enough, so went for 16.
Post by Robin Fairbairns
thinking about it on my way home (a slow journey) i decided it might be
useful to provide an answer in the faq (ignoring the fact that no newbie
is likely to look at the faq, but at least it would be a useful link to
give to people who were having trouble).
For those of us with underendowed disks: is there an obvious solution? Like
can the texlive packages be organised to exclude more of the documentation?
Possible caching link to DVD/local www for when you do want it?
Post by Robin Fairbairns
in the discussion in the meeting, several "obvious" things were touched
on: don't retain the package files, don't keep a source tree. some
suggested not to retain the documentation, though that (imho) is a
dangerous.
I know what you're thinking. "Did he use six packages or only five?" Well, to
tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. ...

Simon
--
Get Things Fixed
Robin Fairbairns
2012-10-23 09:17:31 UTC
Permalink
Post by Khaled Hosny
Post by Paulo Roberto Massa Cereda
Post by Khaled Hosny
Can't agree more. I'm pretty sure there is a name for this not uncommon
software development phenomenon.
There is. :) The most common name I know for this phenomenon is
"Feature creep", but apparently there are other similar names as
well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep
I can redo it in a less complex way, but by the time it provides the
same features (which, after all, turn to be necessary) it becomes as
complex as the system it was set to replace.
it's not the problem i'm interested in, either.

what i want to point to, from the faq, is a coherent strategy for
newbies to download enough of tl for a coherent system, without hauling
in things that are _not_ necessary. so (for example) lm fonts without
cm-super (i'm not even sure whether that's a proper dichotomy).

robin
Benoit RIVET
2012-10-23 11:14:35 UTC
Permalink
Post by Robin Fairbairns
what i want to point to, from the faq, is a coherent strategy for
newbies to download enough of tl for a coherent system, without hauling
in things that are _not_ necessary. so (for example) lm fonts without
cm-super (i'm not even sure whether that's a proper dichotomy).
There is a BasicTeX distribution for Mac OS X, described on http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html
Post by Robin Fairbairns
BasicTeX
approximately 64M - 08 July 2012
BasicTeX is a subset of TeX Live designed for easy download by users with limited download speed. The package is remarkably capable. It contains all of the standard tools needed to write TeX documents, including TeX, LaTeX, pdfTeX, MetaFont, dvips, ConTeXt, MetaPost, and XeTeX. It contains AMSTeX, the Latin Modern Fonts, the TeX Live Manager to add and update packages from TeX Live, and the new SyncTeX.
BasicTeX may be a good starting point for a minimal Tex distribution, based on TexLive.

Regards,

Beno?t RIVET
Karl Berry
2012-10-23 22:41:21 UTC
Permalink
There is a BasicTeX distribution for Mac OS X

Indeed. And, guess what? Basic(MacOSX)TeX is exactly a TL installation
scheme, namely scheme-small. See my previous reply, rinse and repeat :).

Robin: sorry, I cannot get a grip on what you're asking for wrt cm-super
vs. lm, etc. What I can tell you is that cm-super is in
collection-fontsrecommended, and that is included in scheme-medium and
larger (eg, not scheme-small). Whereas it looks lm is included in
scheme-small due to dependencies (collection-latexrecommended ->
fontspec).

But anyway, FWIW, my recommendation (aside from buying a bigger disk)
for someone who doesn't want to install the whole thing is:
1) choose a different installation scheme; and then
2) use tlmgr to install packages as you find you need them.

karl

P.S. I also have no experience with texliveonfly. As far as I know, its
author never contacted us about anything. The first I heard about it
was when it showed up on CTAN. I have never needed or wanted to install
packages "on the fly" myself, so I have never tried it.
Herbert Schulz
2012-10-23 23:09:46 UTC
Permalink
Post by Benoit RIVET
There is a BasicTeX distribution for Mac OS X
Indeed. And, guess what? Basic(MacOSX)TeX is exactly a TL installation
scheme, namely scheme-small. See my previous reply, rinse and repeat :).
Robin: sorry, I cannot get a grip on what you're asking for wrt cm-super
vs. lm, etc. What I can tell you is that cm-super is in
collection-fontsrecommended, and that is included in scheme-medium and
larger (eg, not scheme-small). Whereas it looks lm is included in
scheme-small due to dependencies (collection-latexrecommended ->
fontspec).
But anyway, FWIW, my recommendation (aside from buying a bigger disk)
1) choose a different installation scheme; and then
2) use tlmgr to install packages as you find you need them.
karl
P.S. I also have no experience with texliveonfly. As far as I know, its
author never contacted us about anything. The first I heard about it
was when it showed up on CTAN. I have never needed or wanted to install
packages "on the fly" myself, so I have never tried it.
Howdy,

BasicTeX.pkg is the basic scheme with some added items. To get the full story take a look at BasicTeX.pdf at <http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html>.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)
Robin Fairbairns
2012-10-23 23:19:03 UTC
Permalink
Post by Herbert Schulz
Post by Benoit RIVET
There is a BasicTeX distribution for Mac OS X
Indeed. And, guess what? Basic(MacOSX)TeX is exactly a TL installation
scheme, namely scheme-small. See my previous reply, rinse and repeat :).
Robin: sorry, I cannot get a grip on what you're asking for wrt cm-super
vs. lm, etc. What I can tell you is that cm-super is in
collection-fontsrecommended, and that is included in scheme-medium and
larger (eg, not scheme-small). Whereas it looks lm is included in
scheme-small due to dependencies (collection-latexrecommended ->
fontspec).
But anyway, FWIW, my recommendation (aside from buying a bigger disk)
1) choose a different installation scheme; and then
2) use tlmgr to install packages as you find you need them.
karl
P.S. I also have no experience with texliveonfly. As far as I know, its
author never contacted us about anything. The first I heard about it
was when it showed up on CTAN. I have never needed or wanted to install
packages "on the fly" myself, so I have never tried it.
i really must get to bed, or i'll fall asleep at work (like i nearly did
today).

but i'll write to you, karl, properly when it's light here again...
Post by Herbert Schulz
Howdy,
BasicTeX.pkg is the basic scheme with some added items. To get the
full story take a look at BasicTeX.pdf at
<http://www.tug.org/mactex/morepackages.html>.
yes -- found that, and understand it. looks a well-thought-out
arrangement.

i have mactex full on my laptop -- perhaps i should try -basic as well,
to see what it "provokes". i don't actually do much texing other than
the faq, except when i'm helping one of our lecturers to sort something out.

robin
Karl Berry
2012-10-23 23:19:19 UTC
Permalink
BasicTeX.pkg is the basic scheme
with some added items.

I see that is still what is described in
http://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/BasicTeX.pdf, but I think (hope) that is
simply out of date.

I created scheme-small at Dick's request specifically to be used for
BasicTeX (it is scheme-basic plus those "added" packages that he
wanted), and I was under the impression that Dick was in fact using it.

k
Richard Koch
2012-10-24 01:20:45 UTC
Permalink
Folks,

Karl is absolutely correct. BasicTeX installs exactly the "small" scheme for
TeX Live as of 2012. Earlier versions of BasicTeX did the same
thing in a more ad hoc way until Karl offered to create a scheme that did
exactly what we wanted.

When the 2012 version of BasicTeX was created, I revised the
documentation in the MacTeX build directory. Sadly, the new version
of the documentation never made it to my web site, which is also
linked from tug.org/mactex. Now the web site has the correct
documentation.

The MacTeX web page has one error. BasicTeX no longer contains
ConTeXt, because the ConTeXt people offer their own minimal
distribution for it, called the "ConTeXt suite."

Dick Koch

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