Texlive old install support

[khzimmer at posteo.de]

Am 14.04.2020 12:57 schrieb David Carlisle:
>> Perfect (from users' point of view) would be:
>> 
>> Having radiobuttons in the GUI:
>> 
>> ( ) Use last year's TeX Life collection
>> ( ) Use newest TeX Life
>> 
>> Could that be done?  :)
>> 
>> Cheers
>> Karl-Heinz
>> 
> 
> I think it would be a big mistake to offer such a simple gui option to 
> end users
> .
> Some people who really need archive stability and possibly a virtual
> machine archiving an entire historic build process can do that, but
> they don't need a radio button to help them.
> 
> But to offer an end user an easy option to install a tex system that
> can not be updated and is likely untested with current packages that
> are available on ctan seems very risky.
> 
> If the end user has a document and it fails to work after updating the
> texlive year that should (normally) be considered as a bug. It's
> always reasonable to report it anyway, the package author will either
> accept it as a bug or document what change is required in the new
> version.
> 
> 
> David

I see, yes, there are two different ways of thinking:

* Other projects are releasing "stable version" and then (perhaps) also 
unstable work-in-progress.

* But the TeX system and all of its packages are assumed to be stable at 
any time.


So you are right, I agree there is no need to have 'freezed' versions 
available via the installer program.

Thanks for your patience. :)

Karl-Heinz