tlmgr [option]... action [option]... [operand]...
tlmgr manages an existing TeX Live installation, both packages and configuration options. For information on initially downloading and installing TeX Live, see http://tug.org/texlive/acquire.html.
The most up-to-date version of this documentation (updated nightly from
the development sources) is available at
http://tug.org/texlive/tlmgr.html, along with procedures for updating
tlmgr itself and information about test versions.
TeX Live is organized into a few top-level schemes, each of which is defined as a different set of collections and packages, where a collection is a set of packages, and a package is what contains actual files. Schemes typically contain a mix of collections and packages, but each package is included in exactly one collection, no more and no less. Installation can be customized and managed at any level.
See http://tug.org/texlive/doc for all the TeX Live documentation available.
After successfully installing TeX Live, here are a few common operations
with tlmgr:
tlmgr option repository http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnetTell tlmgr to use a nearby CTAN mirror for future updates; useful if
you installed TeX Live from the DVD image and want continuing updates.
tlmgr update --listReport what would be updated without actually updating anything.
tlmgr update --allMake your local TeX installation correspond to what is in the package repository (typically useful when updating from CTAN).
tlmgr info pkgDisplay detailed information about pkg, such as the installation status and description.
For all the capabilities and details of tlmgr, please read the
following voluminous information.
The following options to tlmgr are global options, not specific to
any action. All options, whether global or action-specific, can be
given anywhere on the command line, and in any order. The first
non-option argument will be the main action. In all cases,
--option and -option are equivalent, and an = is optional
between an option name and its value.
Specifies the package repository from which packages should be installed
or updated, overriding the default package repository found in the
installation's TeX Live Package Database (a.k.a. the TLPDB, defined
entirely in the file tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb). The documentation for
install-tl has more details about this
(http://tug.org/texlive/doc/install-tl.html).
--repository changes the repository location only for the current
run; to make a permanent change, use option repository (see the
the option manpage action).
For backward compatibility and convenience, --location and --repo
are accepted as aliases for this option.
tlmgr has a graphical interface as well as the command-line
interface. You can give this option, --gui, together with an action
to be brought directly into the respective screen of the GUI. For
example, running
tlmgr --gui update
starts you directly at the update screen. Without any action, the GUI will be started at the main screen.
Normally the GUI tries to deduce your language from the environment (on
Windows via the registry, on Unix via LC_MESSAGES). If that fails you
can select a different language by giving this option with a language
code (based on ISO 639-1). Currently supported (but not necessarily
completely translated) are: English (en, default), Czech (cs), German
(de), French (fr), Italian (it), Japanese (ja), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl),
Brazilian Portuguese (pt_br), Russian (ru), Slovak (sk), Slovenian (sl),
Serbian (sr), Vietnamese (vi), simplified Chinese (zh-cn), and
traditional Chinese (zh-tw).
Instead of the normal output intended for human consumption, write (to standard output) a fixed format more suitable for machine parsing. See the MACHINE-READABLE OUTPUT section below.
tlmgr logs all package actions (install, remove, update, failed
updates, failed restores) to a separate log file, by default
TEXMFSYSVAR/web2c/tlmgr.log. This option allows you to specific a
different file for the log.
This option makes tlmgr wait for user input before exiting. Useful on
Windows to avoid command windows disappearing.
For network-based installations, this option (on by default) makes
tlmgr try to set up a persistent connection (using the the Net::LWP manpage
Perl module). The idea is to open and reuse only one connection per
session between your computer and the server, instead of initiating a
new download for each package.
If this is not possible, tlmgr will fall back to using wget. To
disable these persistent connections, use --no-persistent-downloads.
Suppress the execution of the execute actions as defined in the tlpsrc files. Documented only for completeness, as this is only useful in debugging.
In GUI mode, this switch makes tlmgr report any missing, or more
likely untranslated, messages to standard error. Helpful for
translators to see what remains to be done.
The standard options for TeX Live programs are also accepted:
--help/-h/-?, --version, -q (no informational messages), -v
(debugging messages, can be repeated). For the details about these, see
the the TeXLive::TLUtils manpage documentation.
The --version option shows version information about the TeX Live
release and about the tlmgr script itself. If -v is given as
well, revision number for the used TeX Live Perl modules are shown, too.
Gives this help information (same as --help).
Gives version information (same as --version).
If -v has been given the revisions of the used modules are reported, too.
Start the graphical user interface. See GUI below.
Install each pkg given on the command line. By default this installs all packages on which the given pkgs are dependent, also. Options:
Instead of fetching a package from the installation repository, use the packages files given on the command line. These files need to be proper TeX Live package files (with contained tlpobj file).
Reinstall a package (including dependencies for collections) even if it seems to be already installed (i.e, is present in the TLPDB). This is useful to recover from accidental removal of files in the hierarchy.
When re-installing, only dependencies on normal packages are followed (not those of category Scheme or Collection).
Do not install dependencies. (By default, installing a package ensures that all dependencies of this package are fulfilled.)
When you install a package which ships binary files the respective
binary package will also be installed. That is, for a package foo,
the package foo.i386-linux will also be installed on an i386-linux
system. This switch suppresses this behavior, and also implies
--no-depends. Don't use it unless you are sure of what you are
doing.
Nothing is actually installed; instead, the actions to be performed are written to the terminal.
If updates to tlmgr itself (or other parts of the basic
infrastructure) are present, tlmgr will bail out and not perform the
installation unless this option is given. Not recommended.
Updates the packages given as arguments to the latest version available
at the installation source. Either --all or at least one pkg name
must be specified. Options:
Update all installed packages except for tlmgr itself. Thus, if
updates to tlmgr itself are present, this will simply give an error,
unless also the option --force or --self is given. (See below.)
In addition to updating the installed packages, during the update of a collection the local installation is (by default) synchronized to the status of the collection on the server, for both additions and removals.
This means that if a package has been removed on the server (and thus
has also been removed from the respective collection), tlmgr will
remove the package in the local installation. This is called
``auto-remove'' and is announced as such when using the option
--list. This auto-removal can be suppressed using the option
--no-auto-remove.
Analogously, if a package has been added to a collection on the server
that is also installed locally, it will be added to the local
installation. This is called ``auto-install'' and is announced as such
when using the option --list. This auto-installation can be
suppressed using the option --no-auto-install.
An exception to the collection dependency checks (including the
auto-installation of packages just mentioned) are those that have been
``forcibly removed'' by you, that is, you called tlmgr remove --force
on them. (See the remove action documentation.) To reinstall any
such forcibly removed packages use --reinstall-forcibly-removed.
If you want to exclude some packages from the current update run (e.g.,
due to a slow link), see the --exclude option below.
Update tlmgr itself (that is, the infrastructure packages) if updates
to it are present. On Windows this includes updates to the private Perl
interpreter shipped inside TeX Live.
If this option is given together with either --all or a list of
packages, then tlmgr will be updated first and, if this update
succeeds, the new version will be restarted to complete the rest of the
updates.
In short:
tlmgr update --self # update infrastructure only
tlmgr update --self --all # update infrastructure and all packages
tlmgr update --force --all # update all packages but *not* infrastructure
# ... this last at your own risk, not recommended!
Nothing is actually installed; instead, the actions to be performed are
written to the terminal. This is a more detailed report than --list.
Concisely list the packages which would be updated, newly installed, or
removed, without actually changing anything.
If --all is also given, all available updates are listed.
If --self is given, but not --all, only updates to the
critical packages (tlmgr, texlive infrastructure, perl on Windows, etc.)
are listed.
If neither --all nor --self is given, and in addition no pkg is
given, then --all is assumed (thus, tlmgr update --list is the
same as tlmgr update --list --all).
If neither --all nor --self is given, but specific package names are
given, those packages are checked for updates.
Exclude pkg from the update process. If this option is given more than once, its arguments accumulate.
An argument pkg excludes both the package pkg itself and all its related platform-specific packages pkg.ARCH. For example,
tlmgr update --all --exclude a2ping
will not update a2ping, a2ping.i386-linux, or
any other a2ping.ARCH package.
If this option specifies a package that would otherwise be a candidate
for auto-installation, auto-removal, or reinstallation of a forcibly
removed package, tlmgr quits with an error message. Excludes are not
supported in these circumstances.
Under normal circumstances tlmgr tries to remove packages which have
disappeared on the server, as described above under --all. This
option prevents any such removals, either for all packages (with
--all), or the given pkg names.
Under normal circumstances tlmgr will install packages which are new
on the server, as described above under --all. This option prevents
any such automatic installation, either for all packages (with
--all), or the given pkg names.
Furthermore, after the tlmgr run using this has finished, the
packages that would have been auto-installed will be considered as
forcibly removed. So, if foobar is the only new package on the
server, then
tlmgr update --all --no-auto-install
is equivalent to
tlmgr update --all tlmgr remove --force foobar
Under normal circumstances tlmgr will not install packages that have
been forcibly removed by the user; that is, removed with remove
--force, or whose installation was prohibited by --no-auto-install
during an earlier update.
This option makes tlmgr ignore the forcible removals and re-install
all such packages. This can be used to completely synchronize an
installation with the server's idea of what is available:
tlmgr update --reinstall-forcibly-removed --all
These two options control the creation of backups of packages before
updating; that is, backup of packages as currently installed. If
neither of these options are given, no backup package will be saved. If
--backupdir is given and specifies a writable directory then a backup
will be made in that location. If only --backup is given, then a
backup will be made to the directory previously set via the option
action (see below). If both are given then a backup will be made to the
specified directory.
You can set options via the option action to automatically create
backups for all packages, and/or keep only a certain number of
backups. Please see the option action for details.
tlmgr always makes a temporary backup when updating packages, in case
of download or other failure during an update. In contrast, the purpose
of this --backup option is to allow you to save a persistent backup
in case the actual content of the update causes problems, e.g.,
introduces an incompatibility.
The restore action explains how to restore from a backup.
If you call for updating a package normally all depending packages will also be checked for updates and updated if necessary. This switch suppresses this behavior.
See above under install (and beware).
Force update of normal packages, without updating tlmgr itself
(unless the --self option is also given). Not recommended.
Also, update --list is still performed regardless of this option.
If the package on the server is older than the package already installed
(e.g., if the selected mirror is out of date), tlmgr does not
downgrade. Also, packages for uninstalled platforms are not installed.
If the --clean option is not specified, this action makes a backup of
the given packages, or all packages given --all. These backups are
saved to the value of the --backupdir option, if that is an existing and
writable directory. If --backupdir is not given, the backupdir
option setting in the TLPDB is used, if present. If both are missing,
no backups are made.
If the --clean option is specified, backups are pruned (removed)
instead of saved. The optional integer value N may be specified to
set the number of backups that will be retained when cleaning. If N
is not given, the value of the autobackup option is used. If both are
missing, an error is issued. For more details of backup pruning, see
the option action.
Options:
Overrides the backupdir option setting in the TLPDB.
The directory argument is required and must specify an existing,
writable directory where backups are to be placed.
If --clean is not specified, make a backup of all packages in the TeX
Live installation; this will take quite a lot of space and time. If
--clean is specified, all packages are pruned.
Instead of making backups, prune the backup directory of old backups, as
explained above. The optional integer argument N overrides the
autobackup option set in the TLPDB. You must use --all or a list
of packages together with this option, as desired.
Nothing is actually backed up or removed; instead, the actions to be performed are written to the terminal.
Restore a package from a previously-made backup.
If --all is given, try to restore the latest revision of all
package backups found in the backup directory.
Otherwise, if neither pkg nor rev are given, list the available backup revisions for all packages.
With pkg given but no rev, list all available backup revisions of pkg.
When listing available packages tlmgr shows the revision and in parenthesis the creation time if available (in format yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm).
With both pkg and rev, tries to restore the package from the specified backup.
Options:
Try to restore the latest revision of all package backups found in the backup directory. Additional non-option arguments (like pkg) are not allowed.
Specify the directory where the backups are to be found. If not given it will be taken from the configuration setting in the TLPDB.
Nothing is actually restored; instead, the actions to be performed are written to the terminal.
Don't ask questions.
Remove each pkg specified. Removing a collection removes all package
dependencies (unless --no-depends is specified), but not any
collection dependencies of that collection. However, when removing a
package, dependencies are never removed. Options:
Do not remove dependent packages.
See above under install (and beware).
By default, removal of a package or collection that is a dependency of another collection or scheme is not allowed. With this option, the package will be removed unconditionally. Use with care.
A package that has been removed using the --force option because it
is still listed in an installed collection or scheme will not be
updated, and will be mentioned as forcibly removed in the output of
tlmgr update --list.
Nothing is actually removed; instead, the actions to be performed are written to the terminal.
This action manages the list of repositories. See MULTIPLE REPOSITORIES below for detailed explanations.
The first form (list) lists all configured repositories and the
respective tags if set. The second form (add) adds a repository
(optionally attaching a tag) to the list of repositories. The third
form (remove) removes a repository, either by full path/url, or by
tag. The last form (set) sets the list of repositories to the items
given on the command line, not keeping previous settings
In all cases, one of the repositories must be tagged as main;
otherwise, all operations will fail!
Shows the available candidate repositories for package pkg. See MULTIPLE REPOSITORIES below.
The first form shows the global TeX Live settings currently saved in the
TLPDB with a short description and the key used for changing it in
parentheses.
The second form is similar, but also shows options which can be defined but are not currently set to any value.
In the third form, if value is not given, the setting for key is displayed. If value is present, key is set to value.
Possible values for key are (run tlmgr option showall for
the definitive list):
repository (default package repository), formats (create formats at installation time), postcode (run postinst code blobs) docfiles (install documentation files), srcfiles (install source files), backupdir (default directory for backups), autobackup (number of backups to keep). sys_bin (directory to which executables are linked by the path action) sys_man (directory to which man pages are linked by the path action) sys_info (directory to which Info files are linked by the path action) desktop_integration (Windows-only: create Start menu shortcuts) fileassocs (Windows-only: change file associations) multiuser (Windows-only: install for all users)
One common use of option is to permanently change the installation to
get further updates from the Internet, after originally installing from
DVD. To do this, you can run
tlmgr option repository http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet
The install-tl documentation has more information about the possible
values for repository. (For backward compatibility, location can
be used as alternative name for repository.)
If formats is set (this is the default), then formats are regenerated
when either the engine or the format files have changed. Disable this
only when you know what you are doing.
The postcode option controls execution of per-package
postinstallation action code. It is set by default, and again disabling
is not likely to be of interest except perhaps to developers.
The docfiles and srcfiles options control the installation of
their respective files of a package. By default both are enabled (1).
This can be disabled (set to 0) if disk space is (very) limited.
The options autobackup and backupdir determine the defaults for
the actions update, backup and restore. These three actions
need a directory in which to read or write the backups. If
--backupdir is not specified on the command line, the backupdir
option value is used (if set).
The autobackup option (de)activates automatic generation of backups.
Its value is an integer. If the autobackup value is -1, no
backups are removed. If autobackup is 0 or more, it specifies the
number of backups to keep. Thus, backups are disabled if the value is
0. In the --clean mode of the backup action this option also
specifies the number to be kept.
To setup autobackup to -1 on the command line, use either:
tlmgr option autobackup infty
or:
tlmgr option -- autobackup -1
The -- avoids having the -1 treated as an option. (-- stops
parsing for options at the point where it appears; this is a general
feature across most Unix programs.)
The sys_bin, sys_man, and sys_info options are used on
Unix-like systems to control the generation of links for executables,
info files and man pages. See the path action for details.
The last three options control behaviour on Windows installations. If
desktop_integration is set, then some packages will install items in
a sub-folder of the Start menu for tlmgr gui, documentation, etc. If
fileassocs is set, Windows file associations are made (see also the
postaction action). Finally, if multiuser is set, then adaptions
to the registry and the menus are done for all users on the system
instead of only the current user. All three options are on by default.
With only conf, show general configuration information for TeX Live,
including active configuration files, path settings, and more. This is
like the texconfig conf call, but works on all supported platforms.
With either conf texmf or conf tlmgr given in addition, shows all
key/value pairs (i.e., all settings) as saved in ROOT/texmf.cnf or
the tlmgr configuration file (see below), respectively.
If key is given in addition, shows the value of only that given key in the respective file.
If value is given in addition, key is set to value in the respective file. No error checking is done!
Practical application: if the execution of (some or all) system commands
via \write18 was left enabled during installation, you can disable
it afterwards:
tlmgr conf texmf shell_escape 0
Warning: The general facility is here, but tinkering with settings in this way is very strongly discouraged. Again, no error checking is done, so any sort of breakage is possible.
With no arguments (tlmgr paper), shows the default paper size setting
for all known programs.
With one argument (e.g., tlmgr paper a4), sets the default for all
known programs to that paper size.
With a program given as the first argument and no paper size specified
(e.g., tlmgr dvips paper), shows the default paper size for that
program.
With a program given as the first argument and a paper size as the last
argument (e.g., tlmgr dvips paper a4), set the default for that
program to that paper size.
With a program given as the first argument and --list given as the
last argument (e.g., tlmgr dvips paper --list), shows all valid paper
sizes for that program. The first size shown is the default.
Incidentally, this syntax of having a specific program name before the
paper keyword may seem strange. It is inherited from the
longstanding texconfig script, which supports other configuration
settings for some programs, notably dvips. tlmgr does not support
those extra settings at present.
platform list lists the TeX Live names of all the platforms
(a.k.a. architectures), (i386-linux, ...) available at the package
repository.
platform add platform... adds the executables for each given platform
platform to the installation from the repository.
platform remove platform... removes the executables for each given
platform platform from the installation, but keeps the currently
running platform in any case.
arch is a synonym for platform.
Options:
Nothing is actually installed; instead, the actions to be performed are written to the terminal.
Print the TeX Live identifier for the detected platform
(hardware/operating system) combination to standard output, and exit.
--print-arch is a synonym.
With no argument, lists all packages available at the package
repository, prefixing those already installed with i.
With the single word collections or schemes as the argument, lists
the request type instead of all packages.
With any other arguments, display information about pkg: the name, category, short and long description, installation status, and TeX Live revision number. If pkg is not locally installed, searches in the remote installation source.
It also displays information taken from the TeX Catalogue, namely the
package version, date, and license. Consider these, especially the
package version, as approximations only, due to timing skew of the
updates of the different pieces. By contrast, the revision value
comes directly from TL and is reliable.
The former actions show and list are merged into this action,
but are still supported for backward compatibility.
Options:
If the option --list is given with a package, the list of contained
files is also shown, including those for platform-specific dependencies.
When given with schemes and collections, --list outputs their
dependencies in a similar way.
If this options is given, the installation source will not be used; only locally installed packages, collections, or schemes are listed. (Does not work for listing of packages for now)
In addition to the normal data displayed, also display information for given packages from the corresponding taxonomy (or all of them). See TAXONOMIES below for details.
By default, search the names, short descriptions, and long descriptions of all locally installed packages for the argument what, interpreted as a regular expression.
Options:
Search the TeX Live Database of the installation medium, instead of the local installation.
Restrict the search to match only full words. For example, searching for
table with this option will not output packages containing the
word tables (unless they also contain the word table on its own).
If a search for any (or all) taxonomies is done, by specifying one of the taxonomy options below, then instead of searching for packages, list the entire corresponding taxonomy (or all of them). See TAXONOMIES below.
Other search options are selected by specifying one of the following:
List all filenames containing what.
Search in the corresponding taxonomy (or all) instead of the package descriptions. See TAXONOMIES below.
Search for package names, descriptions, and taxonomies, but not files.
Dump complete local or remote TLPDB to standard output, as-is. The
output is analogous to the --machine-readable output; see
MACHINE-READABLE OUTPUT section.
Options:
Dump the local tlpdb.
Dump the remote tlpdb.
Exactly one of --local and --remote must be given.
In either case, the first line of the output specifies the repository location, in this format:
"location-url" "\t" location
where location-url is the literal field name, followed by a tab, and
location is the file or url to the repository.
Line endings may be either LF or CRLF depending on the current platform.
Executes one (or all) check(s) on the consistency of the installation.
Checks that all files listed in the local TLPDB (texlive.tlpdb) are
actually present, and lists those missing.
Lists those packages which occur as dependencies in an installed collections, but are themselves not installed, and those packages that are not contained in any collection.
If you call tlmgr check collections this test will be carried out
instead since former versions for tlmgr called it that way.
Check that the files referred to by execute directives in the TeX
Live Database are present.
List those filenames that are occurring more than one time in the runfiles.
Options:
Use the output of svn status instead of listing the files; for
checking the TL development repository.
On Unix, merely adds or removes symlinks for binaries, man pages, and info pages in the system directories specified by the respective options (see the the option manpage description above). Does not change any initialization files, either system or personal.
On Windows, the registry part where the binary directory is added or removed is determined in the following way:
If the user has admin rights, and the option --w32mode is not given,
the setting w32_multi_user determines the location (i.e., if it is
on then the system path, otherwise the user path is changed).
If the user has admin rights, and the option --w32mode is given, this
option determines the path to be adjusted.
If the user does not have admin rights, and the option --w32mode
is not given, and the setting w32_multi_user is off, the user path
is changed, while if the setting w32_multi_user is on, a warning is
issued that the caller does not have enough privileges.
If the user does not have admin rights, and the option --w32mode
is given, it must be user and the user path will be adjusted. If a
user without admin rights uses the option --w32mode admin a warning
is issued that the caller does not have enough privileges.
Carry out the postaction shortcut, fileassoc, or script given
as the second required argument in install or remove mode (which is the
first required argument), for either the packages given on the command
line, or for all if --all is given.
If the option --w32mode is given the value user, all actions will
only be carried out in the user-accessible parts of the
registry/filesystem, while the value admin selects the system-wide
parts of the registry for the file associations. If you do not have
enough permissions, using --w32mode=admin will not succeed.
--fileassocmode specifies the action for file associations. If it is
set to 1 (the default), only new associations are added; if it is set to
2, all associations are set to the TeX Live programs. (See also
option fileassocs.)
Uninstalls the entire TeX Live installation. Options:
Do not ask for confirmation, remove immediately.
The generate action overwrites any manual changes made in the
respective files: it recreates them from scratch based on the
information of the installed packages, plus local adaptions.
The TeX Live installer and tlmgr routinely call generate for
all of these files.
For managing your own fonts, please see the documentation of updmap, which supports multiple updmap.cfg files. So by simply editing TEXMFLOCAL's updmap.cfg they will be accounted for.
In any case, tlmgr updates and maintains updmap.cfg in
TEXMFDIST (while the other generated files are in
TEXMFSYSVAR), because that is the location where the fonts
are installed.
In more detail: generate remakes any of the five config files
language.dat, language.def, language.dat.lua, fmtutil.cnf,
and updmap.cfg from the information present in the local TLPDB, plus
locally-maintained files.
The locally-maintained files are language-local.dat,
language-local.def, language-local.dat.lua, or fmtutil-local.cnf,
searched for in TEXMFLOCAL in the respective directories.
The formerly supported updmap-local.cfg is not supported anymore,
since updmap now supports multiple updmap.cfg files, so local
additions can be put into an updmap.cfg file in TEXMFLOCAL.
If local additions are present, the final file is made by starting
with the main file, omitting any entries that the local file specifies
to be disabled, and finally appending the local file.
Local files specify entries to be disabled with a comment line, namely one of these:
%!NAME --!NAME
where fmtutil.cnf uses #, language.dat and
language.def use %, and language.dat.lua use --. In any
case, the name is the respective format name, or hyphenation pattern
identifier. Examples:
#!pdflatex %!german --!usenglishmax
(Of course, you're not likely to actually want to disable those particular items. They're just examples.)
After such a disabling line, the local file can include another entry for the same item, if a different definition is desired. In general, except for the special disabling lines, the local files follow the same syntax as the master files.
The form generate language recreates both the language.dat, the
language.def and the language.dat.lua files, while the forms with
extension recreates only the given language file.
Options:
specifies the output file (defaults to the respective location in
TEXMFSYSVAR for language* and fmtutil, and TEXMFSYSDIST
for updmap). If --dest is given to generate language, it serves
as a basename onto which .dat will be appended for the name of the
language.dat output file, .def will be
appended to the value for the name of the language.def output file,
and .dat.lua to the name of the language.dat.lua file. (This is
just to avoid overwriting; if you want a specific name for each output
file, we recommend invoking tlmgr twice.)
specifies the (optional) local additions (defaults to the respective
location in TEXMFLOCAL).
tells tlmgr to run necessary programs after config files have been
regenerated. These are: updmap-sys after generate updmap,
fmtutil-sys --all after generate fmtutil,
fmtutil-sys --byhyphen .../language.dat after generate language.dat,
and
fmtutil-sys --byhyphen .../language.def after generate language.def.
These subsequent calls cause the newly-generated files to actually take effect. This is not done by default since those calls are lengthy processes and one might want to made several related changes in succession before invoking these programs.
The respective locations are as follows:
tex/generic/config/language.dat (and language-local.dat); tex/generic/config/language.def (and language-local.def); tex/generic/config/language.dat.lua (and language-local.dat.lua); web2c/fmtutil.cnf (and fmtutil-local.cnf); web2c/updmap.cfg (and updmap-local.cfg).
A small subset of the command line options can be set in a config file
for tlmgr which resides in TEXMFCONFIG/tlmgr/config. By default, the
config file is in ~/.texliveYYYY/texmf-config/tlmgr/config (replacing
YYYY with the year of your TeX Live installation). This is not
TEXMFSYSVAR, so that the file is specific to a single user.
In this file, empty lines and lines starting with # are ignored. All other lines must look like
key = value
where the allowed keys are
gui-expertmode (values 0 or 1),
persistent-downloads (values 0 or 1), auto-remove (values 0 or 1),
and gui-lang (values like the command line arguments).
persistent-downloads, gui-lang, and auto-remove correspond to the
respective command line options of the same name.
gui-expertmode switches between the full
GUI and a simplified GUI with only the important and mostly used
settings.
tlmgr allows searching and listing of various categorizations, which we call taxonomies, as provided by an enhanced TeX Catalogue (available for testing at http://az.ctan.org). This is useful when, for example, you don't know a specific package name but have an idea of the functionality you need; or when you want to see all packages relating to a given area.
There are three different taxonomies, specified by the following options:
The keywords, as specified at http://az.ctan.org/keyword.
The ``by-topic'' categorization created by J\"urgen Fenn, as specified at http://az.ctan.org/characterization/by-function.
Both the primary and secondary functionalities, as specified at http://az.ctan.org/characterization/choose_dimen.
Operate on all the taxonomies.
The taxonomies are updated nightly and stored within TeX Live, so Internet access is not required to search them.
Examples:
tlmgr search --taxonomy exercise # check all taxonomies for "exercise"
tlmgr search --taxonomy --word table # check for "table" on its own
tlmgr search --list --keyword # dump entire keyword taxonomy
tlmgr show --taxonomy pdftex # show pdftex package information,
# including all taxonomy entries
The main TeX Live repository includes a vast array of packages. Nevertheless, additional local repositories can be useful to provide locally-installed resources, such as proprietary fonts and house styles. Also, alternative package repositories distribute packages that cannot or should not be included in TeX Live, due to being under rapid development or for other reasons.
The simplest and most reliable method is simply to temporarily set the
installation source to any repository (with the -repository command
line option or option repository), and perform your operations. When
you are using multiple repositories over a sustained time, however, this
is inconvenient. Thus, it's possible to tell tlmgr about additional
repositories you want to use. The basic command is tlmgr repository
add. The rest of this section explains further.
When using multiple repositories, one of them has to be set as the main repository, which distributes most of the installed packages. If you switch from a single repository installation to a multiple repository installation, the previously set repository will be set as the main repository.
By default, even if multiple repositories are configured, packages are only installed from the main repository. Thus, simply adding a second repository does not actually enable installation of anything from there. You also have to specify which packages should be taken from a different repository by specifying so-called ``pinning'' rules, described next.
Pinning a package is done by editing (creating) this file:
TEXMFLOCAL/tlpkg/pinning.txt
with lines of the form:
repo:pkg[,pkg]
In this line, the repo is either a full url or repository tag that was added to the repository list. Each pkg is a shell-style glob for package identifiers.
When a package foo is pinned to a repository, a package foo in any
other repository, even if it has a higher revision number, will not be
considered an installable candidate.
By default, everything is pinned to the main repository,
as if the last line of pinning.txt was
main:*
First, check that we have support for multiple repositories, and have only one enabled (as is the case by default):
$ tlmgr repository list List of repositories (with tags if set): /var/www/norbert/tlnet
Let's add the tlcontrib repository (http://tlcontrib.metatex.org,
maintained by Taco Hoekwater et al.), with the tag tlcontrib:
$ tlmgr repository add http://tlcontrib.metatex.org/2012 tlcontrib
Check the repository list again:
$ tlmgr repository list
List of repositories (with tags if set):
http://tlcontrib.metatex.org/2011 (tlcontrib)
/var/www/norbert/tlnet (main)
Specify a pinning entry to get the package microtype from tlcontrib:
$ tlocal=`kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFLOCAL` $ echo "tlcontrib:microtype" > $tlocal/tlpkg/pinning.txt
Check that we can find microtype:
$ tlmgr show microtype tlmgr: using pinning file .../tlpkg/pinning.txt tlmgr: package repositories: ... package: microtype category: Package ...
- install microtype:
$ tlmgr install microtype tlmgr: using pinning file .../tlpkg/pinning.txt tlmgr: package repositories: ... [1/1, ??:??/??:??] install: microtype @tlcontrib [39k]
In the output here you can see that the microtype package is
installed from the tlcontrib repository (@tlcontrib). (By the
way, hopefully the new version of microtype that is in tlcontrib as of
this writing will be released on CTAN soon, but meanwhile, it serves as
an example.)
The graphical user interface for tlmgr needs Perl/Tk to be installed.
For Windows the necessary modules are shipped within TeX Live, for all
other (i.e., Unix-based) systems Perl/Tk (as well as Perl of course) has
to be installed. http://tug.org/texlive/distro.html#perltk has a
list of invocations for some distros.
When started with tlmgr gui the graphical user interface will be
shown. The main window contains a menu bar, the main display, and a
status area where messages normally shown on the console are displayed.
Within the main display there are three main parts: the Display
configuration area, the list of packages, and the action buttons.
Also, at the top right the currently loaded repository is shown; this
also acts as a button and when clicked will try to load the default
repository. To load a different repository, see the tlmgr menu item.
Finally, the status area at the bottom of the window gives additional information about what is going on.
The first part of the main display allows you to specify (filter) which packages are shown. By default, all are shown. Changes here are reflected right away.
Select whether to show all packages (the default), only those installed, only those not installed, or only those with update available.
Select which categories are shown: packages, collections, and/or schemes. These are briefly explained in the DESCRIPTION section above.
Select packages matching for a specific pattern. By default, this uses
the same algorithm as tlmgr search, i.e., searches everything:
descriptions, taxonomies, and/or filenames. You can also select any
subset for searching.
Select packages to those selected, those not selected, or all. Here, ``selected'' means that the checkbox in the beginning of the line of a package is ticked.
To the right there are three buttons: select all packages, select none (a.k.a. deselect all), and reset all these filters to the defaults, i.e., show all available.
The second are of the main display lists all installed packages. If a repository is loaded, those that are available but not installed are also listed.
Double clicking on a package line pops up an informational window with further details: the long description, included files, etc.
Each line of the package list consists of the following items:
Used to select particular packages; some of the action buttons (see below) work only on the selected packages.
The name (identifier) of the package as given in the database.
If the package is installed the TeX Live revision number for the installed package will be shown. If there is a catalogue version given in the database for this package, it will be shown in parentheses. However, the catalogue version, unlike the TL revision, is not guaranteed to reflect what is actually installed.
If a repository has been loaded the revision of the package in the repository (if present) is shown. As with the local column, if a catalogue version is provided it will be displayed. And also as with the local column, the catalogue version may be stale.
The short description of the package.
Below the list of packages are several buttons:
This calls tlmgr update --all, i.e., tries to update all available
packages. Below this button is a toggle to allow reinstallation of
previously removed packages as part of this action.
The other four buttons only work on the selected packages, i.e., those where the checkbox at the beginning of the package line is ticked.
Update only the selected packages.
Install the selected packages; acts like tlmgr install, i.e., also
installs dependencies. Thus, installing a collection installs all its
constituent packages.
Removes the selected packages; acts like tlmgr remove, i.e., it will
also remove dependencies of collections (but not dependencies of normal
packages).
Makes a backup of the selected packages; acts like tlmgr backup. This
action needs the option backupdir set (see Options - General>).
The following entries can be found in the menu bar:
The items here load various repositories: the default as specified in
the TeX Live database, the default network repository, the repository
specified on the command line (if any), and an arbitrarily
manually-entered one. Also has the so-necessary quit operation.
Provides access to several groups of options: Paper (configuration of
default paper sizes), Platforms (only on Unix, configuration of the
supported/installed platforms), GUI Language (select language used in
the GUI interface), and General (everything else).
Several toggles are also here. The first is Expert options, which is
set by default. If you turn this off, the next time you start the GUI a
simplified screen will be shown that display only the most important
functionality. This setting is saved in the configuration file of
tlmgr; see CONFIGURATION FILE for details.
The other toggles are all off by default: for debugging output, to disable the automatic installation of new packages, and to disable the automatic removal of packages deleted from the server. Playing with the choices of what is or isn't installed may lead to an inconsistent TeX Live installation; e.g., when a package is renamed.
Provides access to several actions: update the filename database (aka
ls-R, mktexlsr, texhash), rebuild all formats (fmtutil-sys
--all), update the font map database (updmap-sys), restore from a backup
of a package, and use of symbolic links in system directories (not on
Windows).
The final action is to remove the entire TeX Live installation (also not on Windows).
Provides access to the TeX Live manual (also on the web at http://tug.org/texlive/doc.html) and the usual ``About'' box.
With the --machine-readable option, tlmgr writes to stdout in the
fixed line-oriented format described here, and the usual informational
messages for human consumption are written to stderr (normally they are
written to stdout). The idea is that a program can get all the
information it needs by reading stdout.
Currently this option only applies to the update, the install, and the option actions.
The output format is as follows:
fieldname "\t" value ... "end-of-header" pkgname status localrev serverrev size runtime esttot ... "end-of-updates" other output from post actions, not in machine readable form
The header section currently has two fields: location-url (the
repository source from which updates are being drawn), and
total-bytes (the total number of bytes to be downloaded).
The localrev and serverrev fields for each package are the revision numbers in the local installation and server repository, respectively. The size field is the number of bytes to be downloaded, i.e., the size of the compressed tar file for a network installation, not the unpacked size. The runtime and esttot fields are only present for updated and auto-install packages, and contain the currently passed time since start of installation/updates and the estimated total time.
Line endings may be either LF or CRLF depending on the current platform.
location-url locationThe location may be a url (including file:///foo/bar/...), or a
directory name (/foo/bar). It is the package repository from which
the new package information was drawn.
total-bytes countThe count is simply a decimal number, the sum of the sizes of all the packages that need updating or installing (which are listed subsequently).
Then comes a line with only the literal string end-of-header.
Each following line until a line with literal string end-of-updates
reports on one package. The fields on
each line are separated by a tab. Here are the fields.
The TeX Live package identifier, with a possible platform suffix for
executables. For instance, pdftex and pdftex.i386-linux are given
as two separate packages, one on each line.
The status of the package update. One character, as follows:
dThe package was removed on the server.
fThe package was removed in the local installation, even though a
collection depended on it. (E.g., the user ran tlmgr remove
--force.)
uNormal update is needed.
rReversed non-update: the locally-installed version is newer than the version on the server.
aAutomatically-determined need for installation, the package is new on the server and is (most probably) part of an installed collection.
iPackage will be installed and isn't present in the local installation (action install).
IPackage is already present but will be reinstalled (action install).
The revision number of the installed package, or - if it is not
present locally.
The revision number of the package on the server, or - if it is not
present on the server.
The size in bytes of the package on the server. The sum of all the
package sizes is given in the total-bytes header field mentioned above.
The run time since start of installations or updates.
The estimated total time.
The output format is as follows:
key "\t" value
If a value is not saved in the database the string (not set) is shown.
If you are developing a program that uses this output, and find that changes would be helpful, do not hesitate to write the mailing list.
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.