1.1

Hi,

> There are two methods commonly used to fight against this situation
> in ebuilds: using addwrite or setting VARTEXFONTS="${T}/fonts". The
> second method is, probably, better.

Packages should definitely go for the VARTEXFONTS one as I'll probably
drop forced global writable /var/cache/fonts at some point in the
texmf-update script (not that its a security issue but I really dont
like having it like that); if its not world writable and a package
needs to build some fonts and isn't run as root (default nowadays?) the
addwrite will not allow it to write there afaik and it will fail.
Nice you have such a list, please assign a bug to tex@g.o for that and
I'll see what I can do to convert them (perhaps adding the maintainers
in case they want to know what's up and are willing to help).
See:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=204433
http://groups.google.com/group/linux.gentoo.dev/browse_thread/thread/bf2e58fe200c0676/b72be3596cd2eb31


> Most disturbingly, there are a number of packages which (probably)
> run latex and do neither addwrite nor VARTEXFONTS. An incomplete list
> of such suspect packages is (for now, I only considered packages not
> directly related to TeX/LaTeX, i.e., not in dev-tex or dev-texlive
> and not TeX/LaTeX packages in app-text):
[...]
> These are (potentially) bombs waiting to blow up an unsuspecting
> user. They should be carefully checked.

Yeah or maybe they dont need any unusual fonts; its probably sane to
set VARTEXFONTS regardless. Probably it'd be worth adding a latex
eclass that would just contain:
VARTEXFONTS=${T}/fonts
and inherit it from any package calling latex to avoid code duplication
(like e.g. the mono eclass do).
What do you think ?


> By the way, while investigating this question, I found quite a few 
> packages which still depend on virtual/tetex, while, probably, 
> virtual/latex-base would be better 

Yep, it would be cool to kill virtual/tetex because it does not make
much sense nowadays. Some might be false positives but please also file
a bug for tex@g.o with that list and cc the maintainers to see what can
be done.


Regards,

Alexis.