[tldistro] [tlbuild] patches for TeX Live

[Robby Workman]

On Thu, 25 Aug 2011, Karl Berry wrote:

> [Reducing to tldistro.]
>
>    My main question was if there is enough manpower/if it makes sense for
>    me to send patches there
>
> Not unless it helps the distros.
>
>    (On top of that, problems in trunk are discovered within half a day by
>    many users using packages from trunk. How would problems in branch2011
>    be discovered?)
>
> They wouldn't.  The purpose of branch2011 is not to be used by
> end-users, but to provide patches for critical post-release problems,
> exactly for the sake of the distros.
>
> Thus, if the distros don't use it, which I don't think they do, there's
> no use wasting time committing anything there.  My (vague) understanding
> is that it is more convenient for the distros to download the release
> tarballs and apply their own fixes, instead of worrying about svn
> branches.


Well, I can't (and obviously won't) speak for everyone, but from my
perspective a "texlive-2011" branch or some such which received 
the security fixes and major usability fixes discovered after "the"
TeXLive 2011 release would be quite handy.  I'm not necessarily saying
that this particular idea would be great, but some/all/selected distro
packagers could have commit rights on that branch, or perhaps have a
distro person serve as the "goto" person for patches on that branch;
this would mitigate some of the increased maintenance load associated
with such a branch.  That said, it clearly would be more work for the
TL developers, and I won't even attempt to sugarcoat that, although I
certainly think it would be beneficial for end users.

Lest there be any confusion, I have no agenda here - I do *not* desire
commit rights to any TL branches; I consider it a win if I can just 
get the software to build and package correctly :)

-RW
-RW