ConTeXt Standalone
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The Minimals are an attempt to provide a ConTeXt distribution that:
- includes the latest & greatest binaries
- includes the latest stable & beta version of ConTeX (one can choose which one to install)
- takes minimal amount of time & bandwidth to upgrade
- does not interfere with existing TeX installations (MikTeX, TeX Live, ... one can have both installed)
- does not need root privileges to be installed
- takes reasonable amount of space
- does not include any LaTeX packages & binaries
- faster
- not such a problem to have multiple versions installed (they do not interfere)
- possible to make it even smaller by installing only luatex for example
They are hosted on http://minimals.contextgarden.net (equivalent to rsync://contextgarden.net/minimals/).
Everyone is invited to test this distribution, but is kindly asked for patience and understanding until we tidy up the details. You need to have rsync installed, for windows it's shipped together with the minimals.
Installation
Linux/Mac/FreeBSD/Solaris
Prerequisites
You need rsync, ruby, around 200 MB free disk space (might change with time) and one of supported platforms (see below).
Installation
Go to a folder where you want to put ConTeXt. We'll assume installation into ~/context
, but you can install it anywhere where you have writing permissions. You can install several copies to several places without interference.
(Mac users can also take a look at ConTeXt Minimals/Mac Installation.)
mkdir context && cd context rsync -ptv rsync://contextgarden.net/minimals/setup/first-setup.sh . ./first-setup.sh
... go and have a coffee ...
Usage: permanent
(For those who mostly use ConTeXt and [almost] never LaTeX.)
Put the following line to ~/.bash_profile
or ~/.bashrc
:
source ~/context/tex/setuptex ~/context/tex
(t)csh users can use the variant:
source ~/context/tex/setuptex.csh
In theory it should already suffice to add export PATH=~/context/tex/texmf-<platform>/bin:$PATH
.
Usage: temporary
(For those who often use LaTeX, but need the latest ConTeXt every now and then.)
Just type
. ~/context/tex/setuptex ~/context/tex
to switch from system-wide TeX distribution to the minimals inside current shell.
Updating
For now just run ./first-setup.sh
again. This will change - the name is not most self-explanatory at the moment.
In theory
mtxrun --script update
should work, but it has not been tested yet.
Uninstalling
Just remove the folder (distribution did not touch anything else):
rm -rf ~/context
After installing
(Not sure if you have to run the first command);
ctxtools --update
texexec --make --all --pdftex uk en
texexec --make --all --xetex uk en
luatools --generate
luatools --ini --compile --verbose cont-uk cont-en
Windows
Installation: global & GUI
(For those who don't need MikTeX/TeX Live and prefer Graphical user interface.)
Download and run the GUI installer (made by Vyatcheslav Yatskovsky).
Slides from author's presentation can be downloaded here.
Use standard windows tool for uninstalling the application.
Installation: local & command-line
(For those who need MikTeX/TeX Live and are comfortable with command-line.)
Download and unzip context-setup-mswin.zip
Run first-setup.bat
, go for a coffee.
Before being able to use ConTeXt you need to run setuptex.bat to initialize the environment. A simple way to do it is to create a file startcontext.bat
(use any name) somewhere in PATH and put this line into it
C:\Programs\context\tex\setuptex.bat C:\Programs\context\tex
Then, you can type startcontext
into CMD whenever you want to use ConTeXt Minimals instead of MikTeX.
Another method is to create a shortcut to cmd.exe and edit the command line to read
C:\WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe /k C:\Programs\context\tex\setuptex.bat C:\Programs\context\tex
This starts up a new command shell with the environment pre-loaded.
For uninstalling just delete the folder with minimals.
Troubleshooting
- rsync sometimes has problems with paths with uppercase letters (like c:\Temp or c:\Documents and Settings). Installing into all-lowercase paths without spaces sometimes helps.
- If you're behind firewall and rsync times out you need to open port 873 for outgoing TCP connections.
Contents
The minimals contain:
- ConTeXt: current, beta + some older releases
- Fonts: most important TeX-aware ones
- Binaries: latest version of pdfTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX, Metapost
- Formats (need to be generated by user) for
- ConTeXt, mptopdf and plain TeX for pdfTeX/XeTeX/LuaTeX
- metafun and plain for Metapost
See ConTeXt Minimals/Contents.
Configuration
What to install
- --platform=name-of-platform (see supported platforms; default: the one we are working on)
- --engines=list-of-engines (options: luatex, xetex, pdftex, all; default: all)
- --context=version (options: current, beta, alpha, yyyy.mm.dd; default: current)
What to do
- --force (as opposed to --dryrun; do the real thing; this is needed) needs to be fixed
- --update (update minimal tree)
- --make (make formats and generate file databases)
- --state (update tree using saved state) needs to be implemented/fixed
- --keep (as apposed to --delete; don't delete unused or obsolete files) needs to be improved
Where to install
- --texroot=path (installation path; default: tex)
Rsync Server
(currently there's only one anyway)
- --server=repository-url (default:
rsync://contextgarden.net
) - --module=string (default: minimals)
- --rsync=name-of-rsync-binary (default: rsync) Why do we need this?
Supported platforms
Windows | mswin | Akira Kakuto (W32TeX) | |
---|---|---|---|
Linux | linux | contextgarden.net | compiled with glibc 2.3.6 |
Linux, 64-bit | linux-64 | Peter Münster | we consider renaming it to linux-amd64 |
Linux, PowerPC | linux-ppc | Piotr Kopszak | |
Mac OS X, Intel | osx-intel | Mojca Miklavec | |
Mac OS X, PowerPC | osx-ppc | Mojca Miklavec | |
Mac OS X, Universal Binaries | osx-universal | Mojca Miklavec | |
FreeBSD | freebsd | Yue Wang, Diego Depaoli | we consider renaming it to freebsd-intel |
FreeBSD, AMD64 | freebsd-amd64 | Michael Krauß | |
Solaris, Intel | solaris-intel | Michael Krauß | |
Solaris, Sparc | solaris-sparc | Vladimir Volovich | compiled on solaris 8 |
Other platforms can be added on request provided that you are willing to keep sending us updates with recent versions of binaries. Please write to the ntg-context mailing list.
See also ConTeXt Minimals/Implementation.