[XeTeX] texlive and xetex

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Tue, 14 Jan 2014, Stefan Solbrig wrote:
> > Okay.  What I was really wondering was whether that tracks the latest
> > versions that would be available through tlmgr, or if there's a separate

> with Debian (even current) you will typicall not as up-to-date as with tlmgr.
> Debian (and also other distros that use regular releases) typically freeze all

That's what I thought.  In that case, the claim from C. Scott that "The
latest debian and ubuntu contain texlive 2013.  You can't get newer than
than unless you have a time machine." is unfortunately not true.  TeXLive
2013 is a moving target, updated on an ongoing basis.  You can, and many
people need to, get newer than what's on the DVD or what's in a frozen
package made on a specific date.

> do so-called "rolling releases", like Gentoo or Arch.  Running apt-get will
> *not* get you the lastest stuff from CTAN. It will only update the packages if
> there was a real bug.

Unfortunately, I don't think Linux distribution packagers necessarily
agree with the rest of the world about what constitutes "a real bug";
there's a fair bit of history of people using packaged versions from
distros like Debian, finding them buggy, being told "use the latest
version!" and replying "But I ran apt-get!"
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/