[tex-live] TL 2010 installation does not correctly set path in presence of TL 2009

[George N. White III]

On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 8:12 PM, T T <t34www at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 6 July 2010 22:23, Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:
>> On 6 July 2010 Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:
>>
>>  > >
>>  > >>> Perhaps the installer should try to detect such cases and issue
>>  > >>> a warning, but it is the little surprises that keep life
>>  > >>> interesting.
>>  > >>>
>>  > >> It seems to me the installer is already doing that. From Phil's
>>  > >> original message:
>>  > >>
>>  > >> Warning: conflicting [pdf]tex program found on the system path in [...]
>>  >
>>  > But this message is concealed in a 11930-line file; should not
>>  > warnings and errors be additionally displayed as the final
>>  > step in the console window (and perhaps a flashing red icon
>>  > appear in the GUI warning the user of this, and allowing
>>  > a GUI way of seeing warnings and errors) ?
>>
>> I assume that you are talking about the log file.  I don't have a log
>> file containing any error or warning messages.  Do you think it's
>> sufficient to display all lines beginning with "Error:" or "Warning:"
>> at the end?
>>
>> Parsing the log file has some drawbacks.  If a message contains line
>> breaks, for instance, we only get the first line.  But the advantage
>> of this approach is that we don't have to modify the installer itself.
>> Parsing the log file can even be done by a separate program.
>>
>> And even if a multi-line message is truncated, I think that it's
>> helpful to provide the line number of its occurrence in the log file.
>>
>> I can imagine better solutions but I don't think it's a good idea to
>> add new features to the installer itself a few days before it's carved
>> in stone.
>
> There are hooks in TLUtils::tlwarn sub that could be used to, say,
> gather all warning messages in a global array and then, if this array
> is not empty at the end of installation, spit them out in a message
> box or something.  Would anyone be willing to look into that? (asking
> in hope to outsource the idea :)

This should be of interest to perl coders outside the TeX community.
The SLATEC xerror package for Fortran is one example that might
be a useful example for someone looking to provide a similar capability
for Perl: <http://www.netlib.org/slatec/index.html>

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia