[tlbuild] texlive and politics...

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

On 03/19/2012 04:48 PM, Boris Veytsman wrote:
> However, right now there is a technical problem: tlmgr assumes there
> is only one repository; you can change it to tlcontrib, but then you
> lose the core one (see the contortions described in
> http://latex-alive.tumblr.com/post/1303450459).  It would be*much*
> easier if tlmgr could accept a list of repositories, merge it and
> select the newest version of the package found.    Then we can
> distribute tlmgr with only our repository enabled, but users would be
> free to extend the list.
>
> This, by the way, would do another useful thing: helping developers to
> start experimental repositories (say, hyperref-beta) with beta-versions
> of some packages to coordinate the work of their beta-testers before
> uploading the tested version to CTAN (and to TL core).  I often need
> this functionality myself.
>
> Can we add this functionality before TL'2012 freeze?  I can help with
> this if necessary.

Thank you for the discussion. The "political" arguments are more or less 
the same that have already been discussed elsewhere, so it's probably no 
use replying to those (but I'm grateful to Norbert and George for 
stating their point of view). If we can let users decide, if tlmgr 
really works with more than one "repository" enabled, I would consider 
this a good solution.

Thomas