texlive-20250308-source

Introduction to TeX Live from source

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.

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, as 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. If you are unable to download the files for this package, go to https://www.ctan.org/mirrors/ to find a more-accessible mirror.

The tlpdb database is shipped as a separate tarball. The texdoc program needs a cache file derived from this (and will create the cache on its first run).

TeX Live from source Dependencies

Recommended

a graphical environment

The source ships with its own versions of many libraries, and will use them unless it is forced to use the system versions. The following are recommended so that the system version will be used: Cairo-1.18.4, Fontconfig-2.17.1, FreeType-2.14.1, Graphite2-1.3.14, harfBuzz-12.1.0 (built with graphite2 enabled), ICU-77.1, libpaper-2.2.6 (used by at least context and xelatex), and libpng-1.6.50

Furthermore, the instructions below assume you are using the layout described in Setting the PATH for TeX Live.

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

Python2 is used by the unmaintained ebong CTAN module (intended for writing Bengali in Rapid Roman Format). /usr/bin/python is also in the shebang line for the latex-papersize and lilyglyphs scripts, and documentation at CTAN says both modules have been updated to work with python3. In pythontex there are scripts to invoke python3 or python2 according to the system's version of python. Ruby-3.4.7 is used by two scripts, one is for pTex (Japanese vertical writing) and the other is match_parens which might be generally useful. The perl module Tk, which needs to be run from an X11 session to run the tests and requires Tk-8.6.17 is used by one of the scripts for ptex and is needed for texdoctk (a GUI interface for finding documentation files and opening them with the appropriate viewer). ps2pdf, from ghostscript-10.06.0, is used by some utilities and scripts.

export TEXARCH=$(uname -m | sed -e 's/i.86/i386/' -e 's/$/-linux/') &&

patch -Np1 -i ../texlive-20250308-source-upstream_fixes-1.patch &&

mkdir texlive-build &&
cd    texlive-build &&

../configure CC="gcc -std=gnu17" -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-libpaper                        \
    --with-system-libpng                          \
    --with-system-mpfr                            \
    --with-system-pixman                          \
    --with-system-zlib                            \
    --with-banner-add=" - BLFS" &&

make

make install-strip &&
make texlinks      &&
mkdir -pv                                $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/tlpkg/TeXLive/ &&
install -v -m644 ../texk/tests/TeXLive/* $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/tlpkg/TeXLive/ &&
tar -xf ../../texlive-20250308-extra.tar.xz -C $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/tlpkg --strip-components=2

tar -xf ../../texlive-20250308-texmf.tar.xz -C $TEXLIVE_PREFIX --strip-components=1

mktexlsr &&
fmtutil-sys --all

ln -svf $TEXLIVE_PREFIX/lib/libkpathsea.so{,.6} /usr/lib