[tex-live] question and/or feature request

[Karl Berry]

Hi Luis,

    Any particular reason to not include the etex extension in the tex
    executable on TeXLive? 

The reason is simply that it's never been done. tex is tex, not etex.
At this point, it would be nontrivial extra work to include the etex
code in the tex binary, and I see nothing to be gained by "tex -etex"
over "etex".

    I mean: it already has the mltex and enctex
    extensions included, 

mltex and enctex code is indeed included in the tex binary, again for
historical reasons, but disabled by default (along with many other
features). -k