[tex-live] TeXLive-2018 fails to update across firewall

[Norbert Preining]

Hi,

> > TL does not provide curl, it needs to be provided by the system. But it
> > is not necessary.
> 
> Not necessary in what sense? If LWP works, then nothing else is needed. If it doesn’t work (for whatever reason), then reverting to what’s installed on the target system seems a reasonable fallback.

If LWP does not work, TL will fallback to wget, which is provided
by TL for those strange systems that don't have it (Mac, Windows, 
some more), but expected to be available on all normal systems.

> So it would work (a) on systems like mine, and (b) with the current web servers that now usually insist on https, and often rewrite the URL switching to https: on their own.

that is what LWP and curl is for.

> But which wget? The one that’s shipped with TL doesn’t cut the mustard.

I expected it to use the TL internal if available, otherwise the system
provided one. But you logs show something different, which is surprising.

> You may be right in this. Still, I see no harm in allowing for wget - some installations may have curl broken. I know it took me some time to get it working, and it wasn’t a high priority because wget was there, doing the job.

You can already, see below.

> >    "TEXLIVE_DOWNLOADER"
> >    "TL_DOWNLOAD_PROGRAM"
> >    “TL_DOWNLOAD_ARGS"
> 
> Ah. I wouldn’t be able to use these with TeX Live Utility, but they should work with tlmgr?

Why not? Is TLU removing these kind of settings from the environment?

> >        1.      If the environment variable "TEXLIVE_DOWNLOADER" is defined,
> >                use it; abort if the specified program doesn't work. Possible
> >                values: "curl", "wget". The necessary options are added
> >                internally.
> 
> What about path? What if a system has more than one wget or curl installed? E.g.,

The usual way this is determined, the first one in the $PATH.
We don't change the PATH variable (AFAIR). But TLU might be special, 
nothing I can do.


> >        5.      If wget is available (either from the system or TL) and
> >                working, use that.
> 
> I’d much rather use my wget than the TL-supplied one.

For that you have to use TL_DOWNLOAD_*

> Now it does, thank you! But it didn’t when I had to mess with it.

That was before the rewrite which was specifically targetting MacOS
and https mirrors by allowing to fallback to curl instead of wget.

BUT, it should have worked *before* the same way as of now with LWP,
in this respect nothing has changed.

Best

Norbert

--
PREINING Norbert                               http://www.preining.info
Accelia Inc.     +    JAIST     +    TeX Live     +    Debian Developer
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