[tex-live] [SCI workcamp D-1.39 forced labour] Re: --help argument broken in install-tl script when resuming failed installation

[Karl Berry]

Hi again Karl,

    I was wondering "How to preserve files downloaded by install-tl" on
    http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/175380/how-to-preserve-files-downloaded-by-install-tl.

Several things.  To answer the original question, install-tl does not
have a concept of its state.  So if the download fails somewhere in the
middle, I don't think there is any good way to avoid downloading the
same stuff again.  The successfully downloaded files are kept in the
temp/ subdir of the installation root directory (that you specified)
while the install is going on, but they don't help.

--in-place is not helpful as far as I can see (I tried it).  That's
intended to be used after you have a working installation, like the svn
checkout of the repository.  

We aren't going to implement a full state-of-the-world thing in
install-tl a la apt-cache.  We already go to a lot of trouble to check
the network connection, retry downloads.  If your network is that
unreliable (totally understandable), then the answer is to use another
method to get the files ...

.. such as rsync.  At the tex.sx url above, Norbert suggested
rsnapshot, but if all you want to do is copy the distributed files, you
could just use rsync (or wget) directly.  Example invocations at:
  http://tug.org/texlive/acquire-mirror.html


Next, regarding install-tl --help: both tlmgr and install-tl run their
help through perldoc, because people vociferously wanted their
highlighting.  But sometimes perldoc and/or the $PAGER that it invokes
is broken, or the combination thereof.  We detect some such cases but we
can't detect them all.

So, I've just implemented an override: if the envvar NOPERLDOC is set
(to anything), then the piping through perldoc is not done and you just
get plain text.  Unless the Perl installation is completely deficient,
that should work.  If it is completely deficient, well, the help text is
just the pod at the end of the source file; view it in any
editor/pager/whatever.  (Also, it's online, linked from
http://tug.org/texlive/doc, among other places.)


Finally, your tex.sx url above talks about the tex-live mailing and not
knowing to reference it.  As I also mentioned before, the mailing list
archive url should suffice.  That is, "the thread starting at
http://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2014-May/035206.html" ...


And yes, to reiterate, all this is of course public info, so please
cite/copy/link/whatever in your tex.sx question as appropriate.

Best,
(another) Karl