Arch Linux User Repository

@xeruf: IIRC, adding provides=(context) will cause a conflict with TeXLive's context. Is that the case? If so, I am not sure if that is desirable.

Please add provides=(context) to the PKGBUILD:)

@neven: Thank you for your comments. This was my first AUR package, so I didn't know that files could be included in parallel to the PKGBUILD. I agree that doing so is cleaner than the HEREDOC. I'll do so in the next update to the package.

I strictly followed the upstream packaging as much as possible and ConTeXt is distributed using rsync. I believe that the rationale is to minimize the size of the update (since the upstream is updated very frequently, sometimes multiple times a week). I named it as -git because that was the only way I could get some the AUR-helpers (yaoart, in particular) not to delete the previous version.

The bitbucket repo that you linked to is an unofficial mirror which contains the macro files but not the binaries. The binaries differ depend on the architecture (32bit vs 64bit), so I would need to create a separate package for each architecture.

ConTeXt MkIV is actually now no longer under active development and almost on a bugfix only state (Most active development is now on LuaMetaTeX). So, it might not too bad to distribute it as a binary package (provided I can figure out how to do that)! For the same reasons, there will not be any significant feature difference between the Texlive version and the latest version.

A tip: it is actually possible to have the setuptex as its own file alongside the PKGBUILD. That would be more readable than a here-document in the PKGBUILD.

As someone interested in using TeX and ConTeXt to create a small document, I thank you for taking the time to somewhat adapt this software for Archlinux; but I have to say, (forgive me if you or the ConTeXt developers are already aware of all this) that this package and the LMTX package are distributed in a very unconventional way, discouragingly so. The usual way of distributing software and similar is to archive it, compress it and distribute the compressed archives along with associated cryptographic hashes (cryptographic signing is also a good idea); or, alternatively, with git. Distributing ConTeXt instead via rsync and especially using an upstream provided installer script surely deters many potential new users. These are real issues of trust. It is also quite strange that the package doesn't use Git even though its name implies so.

Don't know if this helps you, but I found a repository on Bitbucket (sadly without build instructions) that seems like it may be a good alternative to the current way of obtaining the source, assuming it provides the same stuff: https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/src/beta/

Lastly, could you please tell me how outdated the ConTeXt that's distributed with Texlive actually is, compared to using this package and LMTX? I think the ConTeXt in Texlive is called Mark IV, but I'm not sure as to what are the actual differences in compatibility and features between Mark IV and the newer stuff.

@morealaz: Thanks for pointing that out.

please correct graphicmagic to graphicsmagic in optional dependency list.

It's working now. Thank you very much.

Thanks for reporting the error. I have updated the PKGBuild and hopefully, it will work correctly now.

Hi It seems as makepkg is not downloading anything, src folder stays empty. mkpkg is giving me the following error: ==> Making package: context-minimals-git 2016.03.04-1 (Fri May 6 21:17:14 CEST 2016) ==> Checking runtime dependencies... ==> Checking buildtime dependencies... ==> Retrieving sources... ==> Extracting sources... ==> Starting pkgver()... grep: tex/texmf-context/tex/context/base/mkiv/context.mkiv: No such file or directory ==> ERROR: pkgver is not allowed to be empty. ==> ERROR: pkgver() generated an invalid version: Thanks.