[TeX Live] Unable to get ConTeXt (Mark IV) to work

Question

I would like to try out ConTeXt, but I can't get it to work. Trying to run "context my-small-test-file.tex" or "context --version" (or anything else I can think of) results in the following error message:
    mtxrun          | unknown script 'context.lua' or 'mtx-context.lua'
The TeX Live wiki page says "The ConTeXt formats (for MKII and MKIV) are not automatically generated upon installation. See the ConTeXT wiki for instructions on how to do this." I've searched, but I haven't been able to find any helpful info in the ConTeXt wiki. For example, here it is suggested to run "context --make cont-en" to generate a format file, but this gives the same error message as above. Trying texconfig is no good either; it says "texconfig formats is no longer supported, because manual edits of fmtutil.cnf will be overwritten by the new TeX Live package manager, tlmgr, which regenerates that file as needed upon package changes. Thus, to add or remove formats, the recommended method is to use tlmgr to add or remove the appropriate package." But I don't know how tlmgr works, and anyway I'm reluctant to use anything that might interfere with pacman.
No luck googling either... Suggestions, anyone?
PS 1. Are there any good reasons why the texlive-core package doesn't configure ConTeXt to work out of the box?
PS 2. I also tried context-minimals-git from the AUR, which kind of works, but it's useless since the integral signs ($\int$) don't look like they should and have a hideously large spacing around them...

Answer 1

Also, you can have multiple versions of TL installed if you like and switch between them. I like this because I can always fall back to the previous edition if something terrible happens to the latest one! (Especially when I'm installing a new release and don't know quite what will happen.)
I guess it doesn't seem like much hassle to me but I was managing TL with these tools before I started using Linux, so that might make a difference - it is easier, in fact, than learning to manage TL using pacman packages.
But the "do not run with root privileges" is what really decided it for me. I prefer not to manage the installation using tools with privileges which the tools' authors explicitly recommend against! (I guess if you don't need to run anything to manage the installation this might not matter, though.)
EDIT: By the way, I do this even though I pretty much install the lot so I certainly do not save space. But I have control and I know what the tools do and where they can do those things - only under /usr/local/texlive and /usr/local/stow-tex, basically. I manage the installation using a dedicated account which cannot write anywhere else besides world-writable directories such as /tmp. And it all seems to work.
The only tricky part was figuring out how to create dummy packages to keep Arch's pacman and Fedora's yum happy .
Last edited by cfr (2013-11-16 22:57:44)