[tex-live] teTeX: no next release

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Wed May 31 00:38:46 CEST 2006


Hi Peter,

    created *another new treeful* of them

Well, that's fundamentally how the TL installer works; there is no
"upgrade", there is only "install new".  For sure, it would be better to
have a way to incrementally update, but I cannot get my brain around how
to do it, and I have my hands overflowing already just with updating
packages.

Anyway, I guess Debian users will be able to update in the normal way
now, so at least that is some progress along your lines.

    I'm sorry, it probably looks like a trivial point to developers, but

I don't think it's trivial at all, I agree it's very important and
desirable.  I just can't provide it.

    Please let us fix the location and stick with it, and not be haring off
    after every new damp squib that people invent. The next thing we know,
    we'll be installing TL07 in /opt or some other tomfool place.

1) I changed it to /usr/local/texlive/2005 last year.
2) I think the location was /usr/TeX for the previous decade or so.
3) No plans to change it again, aside from bumping the year.
4) So I think your reports of constant changes are a bit exaggerated :).

    Then we should at least do what any other developer does, 
    and provide a window saying so, 

I'm not sure what happens if you give an existing directory to the
installer.  I think it should complain at that point ("TL can't be
upgraded, it can only be installed, sorry").  Can you try it?

    or (better) offering to remove TL2005 having moved texmf-local
    carefully out of the way, and then softlink it back.

Sorry, I don't see that that's possible.

    Otherwise over the years the user will accumulate half
    a dozen TL directory trees and wonder where all their disk space went.

Disks have grown faster than TL ever will ...

    You think they have time to *look* in /usr ever? :-)

Of course I don't expect users to look around in /usr on a routine
basis.  But they might take a gander if they do run out of space.


I know very well that users just want to install their packages and
forget about it.  I've made a number of changes to the TL install over
the past couple years so that the defaults have a better chance of
providing what "mostusers" would actually want.  Beyond that, I'm rather
at a loss.

karl

P.S. Semi-apropos from ee cummings:

one winter afternoon

(at the magical hour
when is becomes if)

a bespangled clown
standing on eighth street
handed me a flower.

Nobody,it's safe
to say,observed him but

myself;and why?because

without any doubt he was
whatever(first and last)

mostpeople fear most:
a mystery for which i've
no word except alive

--that is,completely alert
and miraculously whole;

with not merely a mind and a heart

but unquestionably a soul---
by no means funereally hilarious

(or otherwise democratic)
but essentially poetic
or ethereally serious:

a fine not a coarse clown
(no mob,but a person)

and while never saying a word

who was anything but dumb;
since the silence of him

self sang like a bird.
Mostpeople have been heard
screaming for international

measures that render hell rational
---i thank heaven somebody's crazy

enough to give me a daisy


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