Is there a standard, formal or defacto, for what exactly a TeX distribution is and what programs/features need to be supported to be a TeX distribution?
I feel like this question has had to have been asked before, and while my searching turned up a number of similar questions none got at the heart of what I was after.
For context, I'm trying to understand what TeX and LaTeX are from a software point of view. I've been using TeX/LaTeX for years via the pdflatex command or indirectly via pandoc but I've never really had a good feeling for what, exactly, I'm installing when I install a TeX distribution.
For example, right now on my Mac I have a pdflatex command that's located at
/Library/TeX/texbin/pdflatex
and the /Library/TeX/texbin/ folder has a few hundred binaries in it. So is a TeX distribution just folks deciding which of these programs to make available? Or is there more to it than that?
Put another way: If I wanted to create a new nominal TeX distribution (which, trust me, I don't) what exactly would I be doing/have to do?
I realize this is a pretty big question with answers that could have varying levels of detail. If the answer is RTFM that's legit -- but I'd appreciate a pointer to which part of which manual I want to be reading.
and the /Library/TeX/texbin/ folder has a few hundred binaries in it. So is a TeX distribution just folks deciding which of these programs to make available? Or is there more to it than that?just that and the other non executable files such as latex packages, fonts, documentation, .... – David Carlisle May 16 '23 at 16:48