[tex-live] texlive setup problems

[Zdenek Wagner]

2017-01-28 0:34 GMT+01:00 Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de>:

> On 2017-01-27 at 10:21:34 +0900, Norbert Preining wrote:
>
>  > >  > > ---! /home/cec/.texlive2016/texmf-var/web2c/pdftex/latex.fmt
> doesn't match
>  >
>  > > Maybe it's better not to remove anything right now because Charles is
>  > > able to reproduce the bug and can provide further information.
>  >
>  > Reinhard, the bug is obvious to me. An *old* format is tried to be
>  > loaded into a newer engine. That is very typical.
>
> Hi Norbert,
> obviously, of course, but this is not what I mean.  Since pool files
> were even abolished long time before TL-2013 was released, the actual
> bug is that they are mentioned at all in error messages.
>

Imagine that you have a mess in PATH, you run a tex binary from 2011 (form
another distro, not from TL) which requires a pool file but it finds a
format from TL 2016 were no pool exists. How can you set a better error
message?

>
> I would agree with you if a TeX system older than ten years is
> involved but this is definitely not the case here.
>
> If an inappropriate format file is loaded, I would expect that TeX
> only reports a "Fatal format file error" but doesn't mention a pool
> file.  The message we're talking about is misleading.  pdftex does
> *not* load a (non-existent) pool file at all but complains that it
> doesn't match.
>
> I assume that Knuth's TeX checks whether the format file and the
> binary match *and* whether the format file and the pool file match.
> Newer engines, which are not aware of pool files, should do only the
> first check.  They can't do the the second one anyway, otherwise
> creation of format files will always fail.  Hence it's unclear what
> triggered this error message.  This is also the reason I said that
> someone who is familiar with TeX's internals can provide further
> information and probably a patch.
>
> In other words, the actual bug is not that a new binary found a stale
> format file or vice versa but the misleading error message.
>
> Regards,
>   Reinhard
>



Zdeněk Wagner
http://ttsm.icpf.cas.cz/team/wagner.shtml
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz



>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Reinhard Kotucha                            Phone: +49-511-3373112
> Marschnerstr. 25
> D-30167 Hannover                    mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/attachments/20170128/f1843827/attachment.html>