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The Debian TeX sub-policy
Chapter 5 - Configuration

5.1 Configuration files

Files that are used to modify the behavior of executables must be treated as any other configuration file in a Debian package. However, files that are used to control the typeset output - the appearance of documents - need not be treated as configuration files. It is up to the maintainer of the package to decide which files make sense to be used for site-wide (as opposed to per-project or per-document) customization.

A typical case for a site-wide configuration file is a file that must be changed if a style file should use additional modules (installed, for example, into TEXMFLOCAL). Options that only control document output are rather used for a particular document or documentation project and should usually not be installed as a configuration file.

Note that /etc/texmf/ is a usual TDS tree. Files can be put into appropriate TDS-conforming subdirectories (e.g. /etc/texmf/fonts/map/), but directories not specified in TDS (or added Debian-specifically in tex-common's files in /etc/texmf/texmf.d/) are generally not searched for TeX input files and can be used by packages for configuration files that are not TeX input files (e.g. the files in subdirectories fmt.d or updmap.d).

5.2 Configuration update programs

The central configuration file for TeX applications is /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf, the central font configuration file is /var/lib/texmf/web2c/updmap.cfg, the central language/hyphenation configuration /var/lib/texmf/tex/generic/config/language.dat, and format generation is determinded by /var/lib/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf. All four files are generated by configuration update programs from configuration files in subdirectories of /etc/texmf. For updmap.cfg, language.dat and fmtutil.cnf, this is the only method of configuration. texmf.cnf can be edited manually by local system administrators, and changes will be handled by ucf. Package installation scripts, however, must not change this file, but use the update-texmf mechanism. Local administrators are encouraged to use the update-texmf mechanism, too.

Packages are free to add configuration items to the common configuration files, but they should not try to override configuration items that are supplied by other packages. Rather, shared configuration items should be supplied by the Basic TeX packages or any other package on which all involved packages depend, with a setting appropriate for all. If this is impractical, the involved packages must at least agree on the way different packages override other's settings[7].

Maintainer scripts should call update-updmap with the option --quiet. Besides that, the configuration update programs should be called without any options to allow for internal changes, e.g. of the directories where the generated files are placed.

Packages that changed updmap.cfg must call updmap-sys as detailed in Font configuration, Section 5.2.1. Packages that changed language.dat or fmtutil.cnf must call fmtutil-sys (see below). They must make sure to issue the mktexlsr command before this.