[tex-live] Feature request : upgrading and fonts

[Benoit RIVET]

After upgrading from MacTex 2008 to 2009, then from 2009 to 2010, I happened to stumble upon the problem of re-enabling the fonts added in the previous installation. After each upgrade, I had to manually edit updmap.cfg, track the differences between the previous and the brand new file, add again all .map files I had previously installed, and rerun updmap-sys --syncwithtrees (in case some map file happen to be missing both texmf.local and the new texlive).

A recent message in news:fr.comp.text.tex <8b2bf7e5-f83f-40dd-9dd7-d57ea6de0fea at t7g2000vbj.googlegroups.com> shows how frustrating it proves for the average user to upgrade and find out that all previously added fonts have vanished.

> after the installation even after I ran
> 
> sudo texhash
> sudo updmap-sys
> 
> the fonts installed under the local TEXMF tree were not accessible to
> MacTeX2010. I had to manually update every single map file, e.g.,
> like:
> 
> sudo updmap-sys --enable Map=uop.map
> 
> Although eventually everything is working fine, I am puzzled as to
> why
> 
> sudo updmap-sys
> 
> did not do the trick.

I  think that automagically enabling all fonts added in a previous TexLive installation might be a worthwhile feature of TexLive (and/or MacTex); enabling easier transition from one version of TexLive to a new one.

-- 
Benoît RIVET