[OS X TeX] Question about TL manager and package updates

[Herbert Schulz]

On May 13, 2009, at 9:53 PM, Adam M. Goldstein wrote:

> Hi all
>
> This is only really tangentially about TL manager---more about a  
> side-effect of its use.
>
> When I check for updates, often I find that the packages have  
> changed in size only by a few hundred kb. For instance, tonight, I  
> found that hyperref was listed as having changed, from 12,636kb to  
> 12,984kb. On the one hand, it could be that every line of code has  
> been rewritten and it came out to nearly the same length. Ok, that's  
> an exaggeration, but you get the idea. On the other hand, it might  
> be that nothing really important has changed, a bunch of comments  
> were added, or its managed to take up a small amount of space on a  
> new sector of the disk at CTAN and now the size is being reported as  
> bigger.
>
> Is my frequently checking for updates leading to downloading the  
> same packages again and again?
>
> I realize that there is no single answer to this question, but maybe  
> there is a general rule.
>
> Thanks all for considering my question.
>
> Adam


Howdy,

Sometimes adding or deleting a single character (e.g., a missing or  
misplaced %) can fix a problem. Finding kinds of things can drive you  
crazy.

My impression is that there is a ``version number'' of sorts in the  
TeX Live Data Base used by tlmgr and when that updates tlmgr ``knows''  
about it.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)