install-tl [OPTION]...
install-tl.bat [OPTION]...
The TeX Live installer works across all supported platforms and allows to install TeX Live from various media, including the network.
Post-installation configuration, packages updates, and more, are now available through tlmgr(1), the TeX Live Manager (http://tug.org/texlive/tlmgr.html).
The most up-to-date version of this documentation is on the Internet at http://tug.org/texlive/doc/install-tl.html.
If no module is given starts the default GUI installer (default on Windows).
If module is given loads the given installer module. Currently the following modules are supported:
text
The text mode user interface which is the default on Unix systems, and
can be forced with by giving text as module, or with the -no-gui
switch.
wizard
The wizard mode user interface asking only a few questions before installing all of TeX Live. This is the default on Windows systems.
perltk
The all-in-one GUI installer.
It can also be selected by giving the -gui option without any module.
The perltk and wizard modules, and thus also when calling with a
simple -gui (without module) requires
the Perl/Tk module (http://tug.org/texlive/distro.html#perltk; if
Perl/Tk is not available, installation continues in text mode.
Use the text mode installer (default except on Windows).
(only for GUI installer) If possible, start the installer translated into the language specified by the 2-letter language code. Currently supported languages: English (en, default), German (de), French (fr), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl) and Slovenian (sl).
Provide an installation source, either a local directory via
/path/to/directory or a file:/ url, or a network location via
a http:// or ftp:// url.
If the location is local, the installation type (compressed or live) is
automatically determined, by checking for the presence of a
archive directory relative to the root. Compressed is
preferred if both are available, since it is faster. Here's an example
of using a local directory:
-location /local/TL/repository/copy
If the location is on the network, trailing / characters and/or
trailing /tlpkg and /archive components are ignored. For example,
you could choose a particular CTAN mirror with something like this:
-location http://mirror.example.org/path/to/ctan/texlive/tlnet/2008
Of course a proper hostname and its particular top-level CTAN path have to be specified. (The list of CTAN mirrors is maintained at http://ctan.org/mirrors.)
The default is to pick a mirror automatically, using
http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/YYYY; the chosen mirror
is used for the entire download. You can use the special location name
ctan as an abbreviation for this. See http://ctan.org for more
about CTAN and its mirrors.
After installation is complete, you can use that installation as the location for another installation. If you chose to install less than the full scheme containing all packages, the list of available schemes will be adjusted accordingly.
(only for text mode installer) do not clear the screen when entering a new menu (for debugging purposes).
For Windows only: configure for the current user, not for all users.
Start the installer for portable use---but use the tl-portable
scripts instead of this option. See below for details.
Print the detected arch-os combination and exit.
Instead of auto-detecting the current platform use the one given on the cmd line. Make sure that there are binaries for this platform and they can actually be run.
Load the profile file for repeated installations on different systems. A profile contains the values of all necessary variable for the installation. After normal installation has finished a profile for that exact installation is written into DEST/tlpkg/texlive.profile. That file can be used to do the exact same installation on a different computer.
You can also hand-craft such a profile starting from a generated one by changing some values. Normally a profile has to contain the value 1 for each collection that should be installed, even if the scheme is specified. That follows from the logic of the installer that you first select a scheme and then can change the actual collections being installed.
There is one exception to this: If the profile contains a variable for
selected_scheme and no collection variable is defined in the
profile, then the collections which the specified scheme requires are
installed. Thus, a simple line selected_scheme scheme-medium
together with the definitions of the paths (TEXDIR, TEXDIRW,
TEXMFHOME, TEXMFLOCAL, TEXMFSYSCONFIG, TEXMFSYSVAR) suffices
to install the medium scheme with all default options.
Schemes are the highest level of package grouping in TeX Live; the
default is to use the full scheme, which includes everything. This
option overrides that default. You can change the scheme again before
the actual installation with the usual menu. The scheme argument may
optionally have a prefix scheme-. The list of supported scheme names
depends on what your installation location provides; see the interactive
menu list.
In case your architecture is not supported by TeX Live out of the box
and you have built your own binaries for your system, this option allows
to give the path to a directory where ready made binaries for your
system are present. The installation will continue as normally, but at
the end all files from path are copied over to bin/custom in your
installation folder and this directory will be added to the path for
the postinstall actions.
Omit normal informational messages.
Include debugging messages; repeat for maximum debugging, as in -v
-v. (Further repeats are accepted but ignored.)
Write both all messages (informational, debugging, warnings) to file, in addition to standard output or standard error.
If this option is not given, the installer will create a log file
in the root of the writable installation tree,
for example, /usr/local/texlive/YYYY/install-tl.log for the YYYY
release.
Display this help and exit.
Output version information and exit.
As usual, all options can be specified with either - or --, and
arguments can be be separated from their options by either a space or =.
The TeX Live root directory contains a shell script tl-portable.sh
and a DOS batch file tl-portable.bat which start up a new shell and
command prompt in which TeX Live can be run with minimal impact on the
host system. These files start up install-tl with the
-portable option for some minimal preparation. Don't use this option
directly; it makes very specific assumptions about its environment.
This script and its documentation were written for the TeX Live distribution (http://tug.org/texlive) and both are licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2 or later.