[OS X TeX] LaTeX Updater i-Package updated

[Gerben Wierda]

On May 1, 2006, at 21:05, Maarten Sneep wrote:

> On 1 May 2006, at 17:22, Josep M. Font wrote:
>
>> Oh, yes, of course. And this is indeed an important and useful  
>> feature of Gerben's setup... but how many of its "normal" users do  
>> know this ? That's why I didn't suggest to change this behaviour, I  
>> just suggested to explain it better... What seems to me that should  
>> be avoided is that one i-package appears to be a "subset" of another  
>> one (as a LaTeX installation is a "subset" of a TeX installation),  
>> while in the inner workings it is slightly more complicated. If a  
>> user sees "LaTeX updater", she should understand clearly what it will  
>> do... And when updating the TeX installation a reminder of first  
>> uninstalling the LaTeX updater should also appear. Insiders are of  
>> course aware that any additions they have made to texmf.local will  
>> remain, but what about non-insiders ?
>
> Since Gerben is fully aware that this package is out there, I think  
> handling a new LaTeX in texmf.local will be the same as a newer  
> Context in texmf.local. This is a special case in the configure stage  
> of the main TeX i-package. You will get a question as to which Context  
> should be used: your new version, or the older that comes with the  
> teTeX-tree.
>
> At this point, the additional code can only be a fraction of what is  
> already in the install script (± 2000 lines, IIRC). Especially if  
> quite a bit of the code is already there.

hedwig:/usr/local/src/INSTALL-TeX gerben$ wc  
/usr/local/Build/i-packages/tex.ii2/ 
tex.{selector,shared*,prepare,configure,remove}
      429    2214   19874  
/usr/local/Build/i-packages/tex.ii2/tex.selector
      652    3585   44425  
/usr/local/Build/i-packages/tex.ii2/tex.sharedscript.pm
      244    1101   11281 /usr/local/Build/i-packages/tex.ii2/tex.prepare
     1652    8468   72146  
/usr/local/Build/i-packages/tex.ii2/tex.configure
      171     709    5622 /usr/local/Build/i-packages/tex.ii2/tex.remove
     3148   16077  153348 total

There are now over 3000 lines of (mainly perl) script in the TeX  
i-Package alone, of which 650 shared between actions (install,  
configure, uninstall). A total of 150kB script.

;-)

Anyway, I plan to do this as with ConTeXt indeed. Anyway, this is a  
consequence of the philosophy of i-Installer. There is no tight  
integration between i-Packages and each i-Package should be as  
self-sufficient as possible. This improves durability and  
maintainability as well as the possibility to mix and match install  
sources.

Basically, people should not need to be afraid to install because the  
damage it could do should be severely limited. Hence, installing the  
LaTeX updater is reversible. If it doesn't work for you: uninstall and  
you're back to your previous situation. Or at least that is the  
theory...

G
------------------------- Info --------------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
          & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Archive: http://tug.org/pipermail/macostex-archives/