[tex-live] Stable, reproducible, scriptable TexLive installation

[Karl Berry]

    recently the server seems to have become flaky 

Nothing has changed wrt tug.org. I surmise any "flakiness" is because
there is (and has always been) a noticeable limit on ftp
connections. I've done that because in my experience web browsers tend
to use up all available ftp connections anyway, and it was untenable.

    be grateful if anyone has any other suggestions.

Use rsync://tug.org/historic/... instead of ftp.
Or rsync://rsync.math.utah.edu/historic/... for Nelson's mirror.

But also, I don't understand you're doing. You're installing TL16 But
TL16 is never going to change again. So where does "continuous
integration" come in? And "continuous integration" and "stable" are
polar opposites anyway.  I don't get it. And why not use TL17? Oh well,
whatever.

    historic/ was mirrored along with all the other texlive content. 

It's not feasible to dump XX more gigabytes of old unchanging stuff onto
ctan.org and every ctan mirror. CTAN does not hold old versions of
anything, in general.

Happy TeXing,
Karl