I have limited disk space so my TexLive can not be full. Now I'd like to find out which binaries and packages I really need for every day use. As for packages it seems quite easy. At CTAN I can find package and its dependencies. Binaries are much harder. It seems I don't need any of dvi* if I use only pdflatex. But that's only wild guess. Obvious I can give a "mouse like" tries.
I'd like to determine binaries/packages in advance.
If you want to start with a small distribution with only pdflatex you can find one here :
It only comes with Utopia/Fourier, Luximono and Arial fonts, English and French languages, and very very standard packages.
It's less than 2Mb 7zipped, that's just my personal portable tool with the only programs and packages I really use. I didn't linked any license file to that, and don't know if it is permitted to redistribute things this way so feel free to remind me what's missing !
I had the same problem in the past. Texlive distribution is realy large and package set are don't quite good.
You can see my related post about making ambeded texlive distirbution : Embed Tex Live into application
Here is the pkglist file that I reference into my post : pkglist
adjustbox
aeguill
amsfonts
arrayjobx
babel
babel-french
babel-english
caption
carlisle
changepage
cleveref
cm
collectbox
collection-basic
collection-langfrench
colortbl
ec
enctex
enumitem
etex
etex-pkg
etextools
etoolbox
fancyhdr
float
fmtcount
framed
frenchle
frletter
geometry
glyphlist
graphics
hyperref
hyph-utf8
hyphen-base
hyphen-french
ifluatex
ifxetex
kpathsea
kpathsea.x86_64-linux
lastpage
latex
latex-bin
latex-bin.x86_64-linux
latex-fonts
latexconfig
listings
lm
lm-math
microtype
morefloats
metafont
metafont.x86_64-linux
ms
multirow
oberdiek
pdftex
pdftex-def
pdftex.x86_64-linux
pgf
placeins
plain
scheme-minimal
setspace
storebox
tetex
tetex.x86_64-linux
tex
tex.x86_64-linux
texconfig
texconfig.x86_64-linux
texlive-scripts
texlive-scripts.x86_64-linux
texlive.infra
texlive.infra.x86_64-linux
titlesec
tocloft
tools
ucs
url
xcolor
xkeyval
In this way, uneeded tool like luaTeX, XeLaTeX, matepost are removed. unfortunently we should save some tool like tex and tetex that are needed for proper make format.
If you need to add some package on a list, you can use tlmgr for listing deps and add it to the list before generating packages. In addition, in case of embeded tex distribution you can remove manualy tlmgr related file, uneeded docs, source, ... after building a correct Tex environement. with this subset of package without removing uneeded file, texlive distribution need 133Mo
