[tex-live] collection-science

[Norbert Preining]

Hi all,

too many emails, so just a few lines:
* profiles have never been ment to be a general purpose tool for 
  installation, but mostly to enable restart of interrupted ones.
  I know they are used a lot now.

* I will improve profile handling in the installer:
  - better support to create them from the installer
  - warning/error when wrong keys are included
  - short explanation of syntax of the file

> I don't know what a scheme is.

Sorry, if you don't know what a scheme is then I am a bit
surprised - did you ever install TeX Live yourselft?

> It may only be one line to fix it, but the effect is absolute failure - almost none of my docs built any more due to suddenly missing packages. Also, the failure was completely silent at the installation phase (the installation should have error'd out rather than just ignoring the removed collection) and I had to update and rebuild all 6 build server configurations in order to get usable systems again.

It is not an absolute failure only because your documents do not compile.
You asked to install a set of collection and they were dutifully installed.

> That is a big breaking change.
> Ideally breaking changes would be announced on a mailing list, or in release notes.

People using TeX Live normally, that is install it and update it via
tlmgr, will not even realize a change, because everything is handled
transparently.

So this is not such an earth shattering change you might feel it is.
Only those very few that use profiles to install on a daily basis
and have profiles that might be incomplete might see a change...

Don't overdo it, stay calm.

We will still improve in this area, don't worry.

Norbert

--
PREINING Norbert + TeX Live & Debian Developer + http://www.preining.info
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