[tldistro] New ConTeXt for TL2024?

[Karl Berry]

Hi Hille (and all),

    I noticed that the ConTeXt package in TL [1] are a little bit behind the
    other Context packages on CTAN [2]. 
    [1] https://ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/texlive/tlnet/archive
    [2] https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/context/latest
    Are there plan to do a refresh? 

No. I generally only update ConTeXt when we make a TL release,
i.e., once a year.

Hans is continually updating ConTeXt and his new engine LuaMetaTeX. As
you've seen, they are intimately tied together and typically one cannot
be updated without also updating the other.

I don't know when he decides to update the cont-tmf.zip that ends up on
CTAN, but I wouldn't take changes on CTAN too seriously. (It's
automated, unlike most CTAN updates.)

    If not: how to I repackage the ConTeXt zip upstream file?

Are you asking how I go from cont-tmf.zip to the context.r*.tar.xz
file(s) distributed with TL?  It's idiotically painful.
See the POSTcontext routine, both the leading comments and the code,
in the ctan2tds script (Master/tlpkg/libexec/ctan2tds; not distributed
to users, only in the repo). It refers to a lot of other internal TL
commands used in package updating.

Adapting that to update direct to Debian ... yikes. I hope you don't
have to.

Best,
Karl