[tex-live] TeXlive is too big: how too switch from the full scheme to a smaller scheme

[Alois Steindl]

On 02/26/2013 10:44 AM, Hendrik Maryns wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have /usr/local on a separate partition of 3.5G which is now almost
> full, mainly due to TL.  Analyzing the disk shows me that first
> culprit is the documentation and second the source.  I removed the
> source folders, which gives me some solace for now, but makes tlmgr
> spit out errors (ah well).
>
> But what I really would want to do is switch from the full scheme to
> the GUST scheme (for now).  However, if I remove the full scheme in
> tlmgr gui, it starts to remove /everything/.  I only want it to forget
> the packages that are in the full scheme, but not in the GUST scheme.
>   Is that possible?  If not, consider this an RFE.
>
> Cheers, H.
> - -- 
> Hendrik Maryns
Hello,
if you really want to spend time to save a few GB of data, you could try 
the following:
Get the files scheme-full.tar.xz and scheme-guts.tar.xz from the TeXLive 
DVD (or from some network source, I found these in the directory 
CTAN/systems/texlive/tlnet/archive)
and unpack them.
By comparing these two files you could find out, which collections you 
should remove from your installation to obtain the gust-scheme. But be 
careful: some packages in the gust-scheme, like amstex, are not selected 
from a collection, but individually.
Now you can do
tlmgr remove <list of collections and packages, which you would like to 
remove>.

Good luck
Alois