[tex-live] tl09 release status: coming up

[Zdenek Wagner]

2009/10/15 C.M. Connelly <cmc at math.hmc.edu>:
> "VI" == Victor Ivrii <vivrii at gmail.com>
>
>    VI> In our distribution RH in its infinite wisdom placed all
>    VI> TeX binaries in /usr/bin
>
> Yup.  I'm pretty sure that you'll find that Debian, Fedora, and
> other distros do the same thing.  Then they'll set up multiple TeX
> systems so they conflict with each other (so, say, you can have
> teTeX OR TeX Live 2008 OR TeX Live 2009, but only one of them, and
> the commands run whatever's installed).
>
> One of the cool features on Mac OS X is the way that you can
> switch TeX systems via a preference pane, and a couple of symlinks
> get redirected and everything works.
>
You can easily achieve it if you do not creates symlinks when
installing TL. If you leave PATH intact, teTeX will be used. If you
put TLxxxx to the beginning of your PATH, TLxxxx will be used. You can
do it in your profile, in the command line in your terminal, in your
script. In my office computer I have TL 2007, 2008 and 2009 and I can
switch between them, I can have different TL in each terminal (I have
deleted the old versions of TL but I could have all historical
versions if I wished). And I can remove TL from PATH and then teTeX
will be used. Do not create symlinks and everything can be done.
>
>    VI> while TexLive 2008 we installed into
>    VI> /usr/local/texlive/2008/bin/x86_64-linux/ and TL 2009 I
>    VI> installed into /usr/local/texlive/2009/bin/x86_64-linux/
>    VI> (as sysadmin gave me under separate login all permissions
>    VI> for /usr/local/texlive/
>
>    VI> So switch to TL for those who wants was either with setenv
>    VI> PATH "/usr/local/texlive/2009/bin/x86_64-linux:${PATH}"
>
>    VI> or with adding /usr/local/texlive/2008/bin/x86_64-linux/
>    VI> before /usr/bin in the path
>
>    VI> This keeps everyone happy: those who want up-to-date TeX
>    VI> go with TL, those who want old stuff do nothing, admins
>    VI> avoid installing any new packages.
>
> That's pretty much what we have (except that people logging into
> the new machines automatically get TeX Live 2008, if it's
> available, and fall to whatever might be on the system (teTeX)
> otherwise.  And they can get TeX Live 2009 by changing their path
> if they want to.
>
> While I would still rather have packages, at this point the TeX
> Live install and the users' home directories all live on the same
> server, so if that's down there's not much they can do anyway.
>
>   Claire
>
> *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
>  Claire Connelly                              cmc at math.hmc.edu
>  Systems Administrator                          (909) 621-8754
>  Department of Mathematics                 Harvey Mudd College
> *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
>



-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz