[R-sig-Debian] Installing LaTeX class files not available in Debian packages

[Sebastian P. Luque]

On Tue, 8 May 2012 10:56:10 -0500,
Douglas Bates <bates at stat.wisc.edu> wrote:

> I apologize for abusing the list somewhat but there is some connection
> to R.  Several of the example files in the knitr package for R use the
> tufte-handout class, which, AFAICS, is not available in Ubuntu or
> Debian packages (please correct me if I am wrong).

> The source files are available at tufte-latex.googlecode.com (a.k.a.
> code.google.com/p/tufte-latex) and I presume they should end up in a
> subdirectory of /usr/local/share/texmf or something like that.  Is
> there a standard approach to adding unpackaged class files?

AFAIK, the standard approach is to duplicate the directory structure of
/usr/share/texmf under /usr/local/share/texmf and then place the
different files of the package (LaTeX) where they belong (Peter Flynn's
book, available online, has a good overview of this) under the latter.
cpio is great to replicate directory structures in one fell swoop.  By
default in Debian, /usr/local/share/texmf is inspected by mktexlsr to
update the LaTeX database, so it's run automatically by Debian packages
that need to do so.  However, you'd need to run it manually after
placing and building the files (if necessary) to make the package
immediately available.

Cheers,

-- 
Seb