ConTeXt in TeX Live

[Max Chernoff]

Hi Mojca

On Sun, 2025-06-08 at 17:44 +0200, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> On Sun, 8 Jun 2025 at 02:10, Max Chernoff via tex-live wrote:
> > I've taken over packaging ConTeXt for CTAN and TeX Live.
>
> Thanks a lot for this, but I have one question: what's the plan with
> luametatex binaries? Would the binaries then be updated multiple times
> per year, and if so, from which source?

It's complicated. For most platforms, I'm running

    $ mtxrun --script install --platform=$PLATFORM --update

to install the binaries from the Standalone Distribution, and then I'm
copying these directly into TeX Live. These binaries should always be
functional since they're exactly what's distributed upstream. This
applies to the following platforms:

    amd64-freebsd
    i386-linux
    windows
    x86_64-linux
    x86_64-linuxmusl

For macOS, the Standalone Distribution uses separate aarch64 and x86_64
binaries, but TeX Live uses a single universal binary. For those, I'm
installing the binaries from the Standalone Distribution as normal, and
then I'm directly copying the x86_64 binary into x86_64-darwinlegacy,
and I'm merging the x86_64 and aarch64 binaries into a single universal
binary using llvm-lipo. This applies to the following platforms:

    universal-darwin
    x86_64-darwinlegacy

The ConTeXt build farm builds LuaMetaTeX binaries for a bunch of
platforms not directly supported by the ConTeXt installer. The problem
is that there are only 2 branches---"main", which was last updated in
February (and therefore too old to work with an updated ConTeXt)

    https://build.contextgarden.net/dl/luametatex/main/

and "work", which is updated daily-ish (and therefore often too new to
work with the stable ConTeXt versions)

    https://build.contextgarden.net/dl/luametatex/work/

However, since my build/upload script runs daily, it's pretty unlikely
that the contents of the "work" branch will be any newer than the
ConTeXt TEXMF files, except in cases where I'm releasing to TeX Live
more than a day after an upstream ConTeXt version was released (which is
what happened for this first initial release, but shouldn't happen often
in the future). I don't really like this solution, so hopefully
you/me/Hans can figure something out so that it isn't necessary for
future releases. This applies to the following platforms:

    aarch64-linux
    armhf-linux
    i386-freebsd
    i386-solaris
    x86_64-solaris

And then there are the platforms for which the Build Farm does not
generate binaries. Some platforms have agreed to watch the TeX Live/
CTAN/GitHub releases and manually rebuild LuaMetaTeX when needed; this
applies to the following platforms:

    amd64-netbsd
    i386-netbsd

And some platforms decided to not bother keeping up with the frequent
rebuilds, which isn't really a big deal since the initial release of
TL25 didn't include LuaMetaTeX binaries for these platforms anyways.
This applies to the following platforms:

    x86_64-cygwin

There are also some platforms supported by the ConTeXt installer or the
Build Farm, but for whom TeX Live does not officially distribute any
binaries. I'm including the binaries for these platforms in the zip
archives on CTAN and GitHub, but they're not included in TeX Live. This
applies to the following platforms:

    amd64-openbsd73
    sparc-solaris

There are also lots of platforms supported by neither TeX Live nor the
ConTeXt Build Farm, but with binaries available from Nelson Beebe's
site:

    https://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/texlive-utah/

I'm not doing anything about any of these platforms, so those users are
on their own.

Hopefully that clarifies things a little bit.

Thanks,
-- Max