Debian installation

Install teTeX 3.0

Lucky Debian users can install official packages from testing or from unstable.

Just do:

 # apt-get install tetex-bin tetex-extra

You may verify it with dpkg -l tetex-bin tetex-extra, it should show something like

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version        Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
ii  tetex-bin      3.0-14         The teTeX binary files
ii  tetex-extra    3.0-14         Additional library files of teTeX

Install a pdfTeX update

Since the Debian tetex-bin package already contains a pdftex program, this update is optional and ConTeXt should work even if the release of pdftex provided by tetex-bin is a little bit old.

Fetch the 1.30.6 release (tar or zip archive) from [sarovar].

From within the directory where you downloaded the archive file, execute the following series of commands:

 # unzip pdftex-1.30.6.zip
 # cd pdftex-1.30.6

Edit the build.sh file and add a valid datadir option:

 ...
 ../src/configure \
             --datadir=/usr/share \
             --without-bibtex8   \
 ...

Then run build.sh:

 # sh ./build.sh

If the build went OK, then the last four lines of terminal output are the actual binaries and pool files for pdftex and pdfetex. These have to replace their existing counterparts in the teTeX installation.

Note: The next commands assume that which pdfetex can actually find the executables from teTeX. If it doesn't work, then your PATH does not include the teTeX binaries directory yet, and you should fix that first. Likewise for kpsewhich pdfetex.pool

 # cp -f build/texk/web2c/pdfetex which pdfetex
 # cp -f build/texk/web2c/pdfetex.pool kpsewhich pdfetex.pool
 # fmtutil-sys --all

Install a MetaPost update

TODO: why a meta post update? (See: To-Do List)

Install a Latin Modern font update

Under Debian, root as just to ask :

 # apt-get install lmodern pts-tetex-cm-super

The configuration/update is handled by apt-get

On newer versions you do

 # apt-get install lmodern cm-super

Install the latest ConTeXt

Fetch the current distro from Pragma ADE: [cont-tmf.zip]

As a user, I would advise to install context in ~/texmf (~ refers to the current user home directory)

 mkdir texmf
 cd texmf
 wget http://www.pragma-ade.com/context/current/cont-tmf.zip
 unzip cont-tmf.zip
 texexec --make

If you are on Debian (Etch) you need to do some additional steps

 mkdir -p .textmf-var/web2c
 cd .textmf-var
 cp ../texmf/*.fmt web2c/
 texexec --make

Finished!

That should do it! The output of texexec --version is hopefully like this:

TeXExec 5.4.3 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1997-2005
              texexec : TeXExec 5.4.3 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1997-2005
              texutil : TeXUtil 9.0.0 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1992-2004
                  tex : pdfeTeXk, 3.141592-1.30.4-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.5)
              context : ver: 2005.10.27
              cont-en : ver: 2005.10.27  fmt: 2005.11.1  mes: english

See also the Debian TeXlive install page.