[tex-live] Perl for Windows

[Fabrice Popineau]

* gnwiii  <gnwiii at gmail.com> writes:

    > If you want reliability, use Cygwin

If you want reliability, avoid Cygwin.

No piece of software is less reliable (and less understandable) than Cygwin for a
Windows user. Especially, cygwin programs are picky about the exact
cygwin dll version that is installed. Also the pathnames converted to
the unix syntax (together with mount points) is something relaly heretic
in a windows environment.

    > or run linux in a virtual machine.

I am ok with this one. BTW it is a good idea to run any os in a virtual
machine. It isvery easy and convenient to backup a vmware virtual machine and
restore it.

    > It isn't realistic, particularly given the difficulties of doing
    > development under Win32, to expect TeX to run reliably on a Win32
    > system chosen at random.

TeX by itself is a C program and once compiled runs at least as well
under any current flaovurs of Windows as under any other OS.

    > Any tools you provide may break at any
    > 2nd Tuesday when MS patches another dozen security flaws. 

Absolutely not. Any TeXlive tools are totally independant of the
system. The only link is the msvcrt.dll C runtime dll and this one is
never impacted by these updates. It changes only every couple of
year. And you still may use the old versions, because Windows will pick
the version provided in your TeX binary directory if there is one, even
if other programs are using a more recent one.

I'll stop there. This is a never ending discussion.

Fabrice