- It typically won't work to use separately installed packages together. Instead, you can build a custom set of packages like this. Most CTAN packages should be available:
- By default you only get executables and files needed during runtime, and a little documentation for the core packages. To change that, you need to add `pkgFilter` function to `combine`.
- Note that the wrapper assumes that the result has a chance to be useful. For example, the core executables should be present, as well as some core data files. The supported way of ensuring this is by including some scheme, for example `scheme-basic`, into the combination.
You may find that you need to use an external TeX package. A derivation for such package has to provide the contents of the "texmf" directory in its output and provide the appropriate `tlType` attribute (one of `"run"`, `"bin"`, `"doc"`, `"source"`). Dependencies on other TeX packages can be listed in the attribute `tlDeps`.
Such derivation must then be listed in the attribute `pkgs` of an attribute set passed to `texlive.combine`, for instance by passing `extraPkgs = { pkgs = [ custom_package ]; };`. Within Nixpkgs, `pkgs` should be part of the derivation itself, allowing users to call `texlive.combine { inherit (texlive) scheme-small; inherit some_tex_package; }`.
Here is a (very verbose) example where the attribute `pkgs` is attached to the derivation itself, which requires creating a fixed point. See also the packages `auctex`, `eukleides`, `mftrace` for more examples.