[tex-live] Bugs in install-tl for win32

[Dan Luecking]

I have done some additional testing of install-tl for WIN32.

[Previously I had determined that one needs to find a working
  mirror and use the -url option to select that mirror. I had also
  established that one needs to remove the old TeXLive2007 bin
  directory from PATH. This was done in all the following discussion.
  Also removed my own versions of perl, tar, wget and lzma.]

I successfully installed texlive-medium. Formats were automatically
and successfully generated. The only non-routine messages were
warnings from tar:
   "Unrecognized file type '2', extracting as ordinary file".
this happened for several man1 pages. This was harmless as there are
no programs to display the man pages anyway.

I successfully ran tex, latex and pdflatex several times. I also ran
tplmg and successfully installed the cm-super package.

- There was this serious bug: Registry entries are changed!!!
   I did not appreciate the fact that the rather inadequate psv
   program was substituted for gsview as the default for opening
   PostScript files. This should never be done without requesting
   permission and it should certainly not be done without informing
   the user.

- There is a second serious bug: Uninstalling TeXLive did not undo
   those registry changes. I took me quite some effort to determine
   how to change them back.

Finally, for no apparent reason, install-tl.bat has completely
ceased to work. There is a complaint of uninitialized value at
line 1388 of TLutils.pm, followed by much more. I will retry
and if it continues, report more details. I should add that
I did this immediately after installing and uninstalling texlive,
*using the same* downloaded installation package as worked before.
I also downloaded a new install-tl.zip and the same happened.
I suspect something weird has happened to my system, but that
may be paranoia.


Dan


Daniel H. Luecking
Department of Mathematical Sciences
University of Arkansas
"Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum" --Descarte