[OS X TeX] etex versions

Gerben Wierda Gerben.Wierda at rna.nl
Fri Mar 4 16:39:51 CET 2005


>>It is beyond my meager means to keep my own log of issues.
>
> Too bad for a serious and otherwise very high-quality software
> distribution.
>
>>That would require some editing work.
>
> You surprise me.
>
> How do you keep track of the changes yourself?  Do you use CVS or
> something? which would easily generate some logs... No?

TeX Live is still hosted on a perforce system for which I am a client. I
keep my own copy of the tree in sync with the perforce repository of TeX
Live. For texmf I have a downloaded .tar.gz of the teTeX texmf trees. For
gwTeX I use the perforce Master tree and a few local copies of stuff
distributed not in TeX Live.

So, my source for building the i-Packages is on my own system.

Logs generated from perforce for literally thousands and thousands of
files would not be of any use to a user.

>>But I'll look into automatic copying the main ChangeLogs from TeX
>>Live for the binaries in some location.
>
> Don't copy it into a location, just make a link from you tex page to
> the log file somewhere else.

Such a link I cannot make because
- there is no such publicly visible location (using http or equivalent)
- it woul dentail the risk of getting dead links and would add to the
complexity of maintaining

> A user should always have the opportunity
> to scrutinise change logs BEFORE installing the software in order to
> decide if it is worth the upgrade.

I agree with the sentiment. However the question is at which level. For
most users, the release notes in my readme is already too much.

>Just upgrading thinking that newer
> is better is usually not the best strategy if you depend on the
> software to get some work done.

Which is why the i-Package has old (TL2003), stable new (TL2004) and
curring edge (TL2005 devel) and you can switch if you run into problems.

>It's a good strategy to test and play
> around and learn new things, but it seems to be very difficult with
> tex to keep two complete installations on the same machine...

Not really. Here is what you can do:
1. Keep two copies of the TeX i-Package tex.ii2
2. Let one install in /usr/local/teTeX (default location)
3. Let the other install in /usr/local/teTeX-exp (or any other location)

In your frontend, you can easily switch betwene the two, just change the
path of the binary you are calling. On the command line it requires
changing the PATH. You are responsible yourself to keep any additions in
the local texmf trees in sync.

>>I do copy the ChangeLog for the teTeX texmf tree and maintain one for my
>>own tree in the i-Package where they can be inspected.
>
> Again I would suggest to have this information outside the software.
> In some case this information can even save you the trouble of downloading
> it.

You can inspect them in the Properties tab of the i-Package. There is no
need to download everything to inspect these. i-Installer can be trusted
not to download anything that is not needed for the action at hand and
even has a way to sort of inspect the listing of what will be unarchived
without actually downloading and unarchiving.

G

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