[tex-live] Upgrade from texlive 2016

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Mon Jul 17 01:55:43 CEST 2017


On 2017-07-16 at 20:52:36 +0300, Nikos Platis wrote:

 > OK, there are two things mixed up here, incorrectly (by Zdenek and
 > then Manfred).
 > 
 > (a) The update command (tlmgr update ...) has updated TL 2016 to
 > 2017 without any warning, in the same directory.
 > (b) The procedure described
 > in https://www.tug.org/texlive/upgrade.html does instruct to
 > duplicate the installation directory.
 > 
 > It seems that all this (esp. (a)) will soon be corrected by Norbert
 > (btw, if I recall correctly, in previous years you simply could not
 > upgrade directly).

Upgrading from a previous release was possible in the past.  But take
the documentation you mentioned above seriously.  It clearly states
that the recommended way is to install TeX Live from scratch and that
you are on your own if you follow the instructions.

The very first sentence, printed with bold letters, states:

 | By default, please get the new TL by doing a new installation
 | instead of proceeding here.

It's a matter of fact that upgrading from a previous release is faster
than installing from scratch.  But upgrading is quite risky and the
gain is negligible if you take into account that new versions of TeX
Live are released only once per year.

In short, before you consider to upgrade your system, read

  https://www.tug.org/texlive/upgrade.html

carefully.  I've never seen a comparable file which comes with so many
warnings.  Take them seriously.

Coming back to your statements:

 > (a) The update command (tlmgr update ...) has updated TL 2016 to
 > 2017 without any warning, in the same directory.

When I upgraded from TeX Live 2016 to tlpretest I've got a warning.

 > (b) The procedure described in

 >        https://www.tug.org/texlive/upgrade.html

 > does instruct to duplicate the installation directory.

I assume that Manfred followed this advice.  Hopefully!  Then both
directories, texlive/2016 and texlive/2017, contain identical copies
of TeX Live 2016.

Given that Manfred forgot to adjust PATH to point to
texlive/2017/bin/<platform>, then tlmgr upgraded files in texlive/2016
to TeX Live 2017.

This looks disastrous at a first glance.  But nothing is lost.

   texlive/2016 now contains TeX Live 2017

but

   texlive/2017 still contains a copy of TeX Live 2016.

All one has to do is to remame directories and to adjust PATH.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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