[tex-live] [BUG] Upgrade-Description

[Haines Brown]

I believe it is never inappropriate to look at directions critically,
for they are extraordinarily difficult to write. You have to insert
yourself into the mental world of someone else, and this is nearly
impossible to do. Let me give an example. In the TUG directions for
upgrading from TL2013 to TL2014, steps 7-8 read:

  7. cd to your top-level 2014 directory.

  8. Remove the updmap.cfg file in TEXMFSYSCONFIG that was copied over,
     which is no longer needed or desirable: 
     rm `kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFSYSCONFIG`/web2c/updmap.cfg 
     mktexlsr `kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFSYSCONFIG`

The "top-level 2014 directory" default would seem to be
/usr/local/texlive/2014/, but it would be helpful to say so lest a
person think the top level directory for 2014 is its top, its parent,
.../texlive/

Some may not know what the kpsewhich -a command does and thus the logic
of the rm command. A description of what the command does would be
comforting to the user. Is the rm command run by root or user? The
answer might be intuitive for one person, but not at all for someone
feeling insecure. Directions must assume the latter.

I did a default installation of TL2013, and the value it assigned to the
TEXMFSYSCONFIG variable was
/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-config. Unfortutely, /web2c/updmap.cfg is
not in that directory but instead is in /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/.
I knew the value of TEXMFSYSCONFIG only because I kept the notes I took
during installation, but most users I suppose would not know what the
value is and so be unable to debug the TL2014 installation directions.

Haines Brown