[tex-live] newalg

[Robin Fairbairns]

Victor Ivrii <vivrii at gmail.com> wrote:

> Actually I am more concerned with packages which are discovered to be
> non-free and are removed from TL. Experimental version of TL really
> removes packages and in any Math Dept (or similar structures) one can
> find at least couple of users with the very small knowledge and very
> large aplomb who would tear apart system manager if some package they
> use suddenly disappears (as our sysadmin tells it is enough that they
> come with "You modified something and the file we processed before
> cannot be processed anymore!!! No, no, we modified nothing, it was
> YOU!!!" -- then he restores from backup and diff shows that these guys
> really modified their files". My esteemed colleagues go away grudging
> something like "Next time we will get you")

i don't imagine you keep your sysadmins very long...  (it's not an
environment i would care to work in.  user lunacy is bad enough here, in
a computer science department, but malicious lunacy is just too much.)

for all that, it's good practice to announce when you're going to change
the tex system (or any other system) other people's feet.  (if possible,
announce the upcoming change, having made the system available on a test
machine so that interested parties can experiment, and after the change,
leave an old system available that users can check things on.  this sort
of thing is quite easy nowadays, with virtualisation technology.)

robin