I have 14.2. I installed and used Octave on my old 14.2 machine without knowing that TeX or TeXLive exists. Got new machine, installed 14.2, tried to install Octave, got error "You don't have a working TeX binary (tex) installed anywhere in your PATH, and texi2dvi cannot proceed without one. If you want to use this script, you'll need to install TeX (if you don't have it) or change your PATH or TEX environment variable (if you do).

Installed texlive-2022a-x86_64-1.txz after creating this snapshot per https://docs.slackware.com/how-to's:software:texlive .

Now have /var/log/packages/texlive-2022a-x86_64-1.

When I now try installing Octave (running octave.SlackBuild), I get the same error as originally.

I also notice I am unable to invoke any kind of tex program from the command line, regardless of command or user.

It seems to me I must be missing a simple PATH detail that was too obvious for Sebastien Boillod to mention.

I added :/opt/texlive-2022/bin/x86_64-linux to PATH in my own .bashrc and was then able to run tex from the command line.

So I tried again to build Octave and got the same old error message.

Most Slackbuild scripts assumes that you have made a full install of Slackware and Slackware 14.2 includes tex (tetex) in the "t" package series.

If the octave slackbuild did require texlive or some other third party tex version it would be listed in its dependecies, but it is not listed as the octave slackbuild for 14.2 probably assumes you have the original 14.2 tetex packages installed.

There is also a slackbuild for texlive which in its description says that it conflicts with the original tetex included in 14.2 and requires that package to be removed to install texlive. However removing the original choosen software component of Slackware might break slackbuild scripts which has some builtin assumption that you are running a pristine Slackware installation.

In Slackware 15.0 texlive is the tex distribution that comes with Slackware.

regards Henrik

I do not discount your point but when I first got the error message, it was the first time I had heard of tex anything.

I do not rule out the possibility that my original tex that came with my 14.2, and my current tex install, were/are both good, and something else is wrong.

So I am inclined to chalk it up as an exercise, get my old octive build and use it for now, if it works, and very soon, install 15.0 from scratch.

Nope, did not work because it called for different shared libraries. Old Octave build installed readily but would not run.

However, I noticed I may have lied: my old machine had a compiled texlive package on it, in a directory containing builds of Octave dependencies.

In 2020, I must have compiled and installed probably the entire texlive package! I guess it must have been listed as a dependency then? And perhaps now, it should have been, but wasn't. The slack builds version of Octave is later than it was then.

So to recap, 14.2 includes 2 tetex packages, SlackBuilds Octave for 14.2 does not mention tex anything, as a dependency or anything else, but I got an error that I needed tex when I attempted to build Octave. Meanwhile, I compiled and installed texlive as a dependency of an earlier version of Octave on 14.2, previously.

Everything I attempt on 14.2 since 15.0 came out seems hosed. That is, the SlackBuilds I have tried to work with are incorrect or out of date. Reckon it's time to drop everything and install 15.0, since I don't yet do build scripts myself.