uninstalling an old version

[Denis Bitouzé]

Le 15/03/20 à 02h40, Reinhard Kotucha a écrit :

> The only solution is to avoid symlinks.  It was already considered to
> remove the "create symlinks" option from the installer some years ago.
> I voted against

So I would! :)

> because I thought that there are Linux users who are not very familiar
> with their operating system and that the symlinks option makes the
> installation easier for them.

I strongly    agree.

> Nowadays I think that my objection was a big mistake.

I strongly disagree. :)

> Bob, when you install TL2019 all the symlinks point to TL2019.  If you
> later install TL2020 all symlinks point to TL2020 and TL2019 is
> inaccessible.  If you ask TL2020's tlmgr to remove the symlinks it
> removes them but doesn't create new symlinks pointing TL2019 because
> TL2020 is not aware of your TL2019 installation.
>
> You cannot use the "create symlinks" option if you intend to install
> more than one instance of TeX Live.  This cannot work.

Yes, it can. As I said, suppose your OS is Linux 64 bits and you
installed TL 2019 and, later TL 2020. At any time, you can run:

  ┌────
  │ /usr/local/texlive/YYYY/bin/x86_64-linux/tlmgr path add
  └────

(YYYY being either 2019 or 2020) to retrieve the symlinks of the TL
install you want.

Regards.
-- 
Denis