Hi Marc,

> On Mon, Jul 06, 2026 at 10:13:18AM +0200, Marc Espie wrote:
>
> Final patch until I get feedback from edd.

First, thanks for doing this. I appreciate that hacking TeX Live is neither
fun, nor sexy.

I've now had a chance to play with this (I used tb@'s diff).

It's looking pretty good. It's going to remove a load of duplicated logic, and
it's also already fixing things that have been missed, e.g. I spotted this in
the diff of the PLISTs after running `make update-plist`:

```
-share/texmf-dist/scripts/minted/latex2pydata-0.5.0-py3-none-any.whl
-share/texmf-dist/scripts/minted/latexminted-0.6.0-py3-none-any.whl
+share/texmf-dist/scripts/minted/latex2pydata-0.5.0-${MODPY_PY_PREFIX}none-any.whl
+share/texmf-dist/scripts/minted/latexminted-0.6.0-${MODPY_PY_PREFIX}none-any.whl
```

As you pointed out, we can now start culling some Python from FILESDIR.
`write_plists.py` is now totally redundant and can be removed.

As I understand, this should also be possible:
```
Index: files/update_plist_hints.py
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/ports/print/texlive/texmf/files/update_plist_hints.py,v
diff -u -p -r1.9 update_plist_hints.py
--- files/update_plist_hints.py 8 Dec 2024 20:27:52 -0000       1.9
+++ files/update_plist_hints.py 6 Jul 2026 19:15:43 -0000
@@ -102,13 +102,6 @@ def build_subset_file_lists(tlpdb):

     sys.stderr.write("making plist map...\n")

-    # CONFLICTING PACKAGES
-    # Whole packages that are ported elsewhere.
-    conflict_pkgs = ["asymptote", "latexmk", "texworks", "t1utils",
-                     "dvi2tty", "detex", "texinfo", "lcdftypetools"]
-    conflict_pkg_files, conflict_symlinks = \
-        collect_files(allspecs(conflict_pkgs, include_deps=False), db)
-
     # BUILDSET
     # The smallest subset for building ports.
     buildset_pkgs = [
@@ -230,7 +223,7 @@ def build_subset_file_lists(tlpdb):
         TargetPlist.DOCS: docs_files
     }

-    comment_files = CONFLICT_FILES | conflict_pkg_files | commented_docs_files
+    comment_files = CONFLICT_FILES | commented_docs_files
     return plist_map, comment_files, symlink_map
```

(because that's what `UPDATE_PLIST_ARGS += -t ...` is all about)

However, that change gives:
```
Figuring out tie points
Tieing loose objects
Copying objects
Not a HASH reference at /usr/ports/infrastructure/bin/update-plist line 1107.
```

(There's some more culling to do asides from that change, like `CONFLICT_FILES`
can be trimmed down, maybe removed)

I'd be tempted to do:
```
.PHONY: ${WRKDIR}/hints
```

Because the target doesn't know when `update_plist_hints.py` has changed. I
fell into this trap myself right off the bat. Thoughts?

Can we get a revised diff with the above perl crash fixed? Then I can do a
proper job on the Python killing and run a partial bulk to look for fallout
(although, I don't expect any tbh).

Later I will also look into why we are getting duplicate lines in the hints file. It
wouldn't surprise me if there's a bug in the tlpdb causing that.

Cheers!

-- 
Best Regards
Edd Barrett

https://www.theunixzoo.co.uk