minimal installation of pdflatex and xelatex on alpine (docker)

Question

I want to make a docker image with a minimal installation of pdlatex and xelatex. I want the ability to manually install the packages I need (e.g. fontawesome)

Because I'm trying to be minimal, I want to use Alpine, not Ubuntu. However for most installation methods, it seems tlmgr does not get installed, or does not work.

What I've tried

1. natlownes image: Ubuntu based, so too large (2GB)
2. blang image: build fails. Ubuntu based, so too would be large anyway.
3. My own dockerfile, using apk add (distro repo)

FROM alpine

RUN apk add --no-cache \
        texlive \
        texlive-xetex \
        texmf-dist \
        texmf-dist-formatsextra \
        texmf-dist-latexextra \
        texmf-dist-pictures \
        texmf-dist-science
RUN tlmgr install fontawesome

Fails with

Can't locate TeXLive/TLPDB.pm in @INC (you may need to install the TeXLive::TLPDB module) (@INC contains: /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/texlive /usr/share/tlpkg /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl /usr/local/share/perl5/site_perl /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib/perl5/core_perl /usr/share/perl5/core_perl) at /usr/bin/tlmgr line 99.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/bin/tlmgr line 99.

4. my own dockerfile, using netinstall

sudo docker run -it --rm alpine sh
apk add --no-cache perl
wget http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl-unx.tar.gz
tar -xzf install-tl-unx.tar.gz
cd install-tl-unx
./install-tl

output:

query_ctan_mirror: Programs not set up, trying wget
cannot contact mirror.ctan.org, returning a backbone server!
Loading http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/texlive/tlnet/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb

./install-tl: TLPDB::from_file could not download http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/texlive/tlnet/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb;
./install-tl: maybe the repository setting should be changed.

Interestingly I can just wget http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/texlive/tlnet/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb, and that works. But I don't know where in all the large installation scripts I need to look to skip that bit.

summary

How can I get either option 3 or 4 to work?

Desired result: pdflatex, xelatex and fontawesome are installed on Alpine Linux.

Answer 1

It turns out that the difference in size between Ubuntu and Alpine is small compared to the size of a minimal LaTeX installation.

So I've just installed TinyTex on Ubuntu.

FROM ubuntu:bionic

WORKDIR /var/local

# combine into one run command to reduce image size
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y perl wget libfontconfig1 && \
    wget -qO- "https://yihui.name/gh/tinytex/tools/install-unx.sh" | sh  && \
    apt-get clean
ENV PATH="${PATH}:/root/bin"
RUN tlmgr install xetex
RUN fmtutil-sys --all

# install only the packages you need
# this is the bit which fails for most other methods of installation
RUN tlmgr install xcolor pgf fancyhdr parskip babel-english units lastpage mdwtools comment genmisc fontawesome

Answer 2

The issue is that wget is not actually installed on Alpine Linux, as you can see with the following shell command and output:

/ # ls -al $(which wget)
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            12 May 29 14:20 /usr/bin/wget -> /bin/busybox

wget is actually just symlinked to BusyBox. busybox --help shows:

BusyBox is a multi-call binary that combines many common Unix utilities into a single executable. Most people will create a link to busybox for each function they wish to use and BusyBox will act like whatever it was invoked as.

You can install TeXLive as follows under Alpine Linux:

/ # apk update
/ # apk upgrade
/ # apk add --no-cache perl wget
/ # wget http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl-unx.tar.gz
/ # tar -xzf install-tl-unx.tar.gz
/ # cd install-tl-20*
/ # ./install-tl