TeX Live 2025 - bugs and updates

Most of TeX Live is a redistribution of packages and programs from elsewhere, primarily CTAN. So, the place to send bug reports varies:

• If you have problems with a TeX document, e.g., a package is not working, report it to the package maintainer. As a rule, package-specific fixes are not installed directly in TL; instead, new versions of packages need to be uploaded to CTAN.
• If you have questions about using TeX, or need help with TeX, please use the general help resources.
• To report a bug in TeX Live installation or infrastructure, email the public mailing list tex-live@tug.org (public archives).
• For security-related reports, please use the tlsecurity@tug.org mailing list (private archives).

Common requests:

• If you need to use alternate binaries, our recommended approach is the custom binary support in the TL installer. Numerous additional binary sets are available through links on that page. Compiling from source is also an option.
• TL does not provide modules for scripting languages, or interpreters themselves (except for texlua; and, only on Windows, a minimal Perl). Thus it is up to each user to install any needed dependencies of third-party scripts. More info.

Known issues in TeX Live 2025

1. In the original release, LuaTeX did not typeset integrals correctly. This was fixed in LuaTeX development id 7673.
2. In the original release, (x)dvipdfmx crashed on certain PDF inclusions. This was fixed in dvipdfmx version 20250410. Also, font subset tags are now reproducible.

Notable changes

As always, there were pervasive updates to packages and programs (highlights of changes). We can't list them all, but here are some of the principal user-visible changes since the initial TL24 release:

Cross-engine updates

• Generate PDF-1.7 by default in all formats, both plain and LaTeX; before, it was 1.5. You may need to generate an older PDF version, especially for printing companies. You can generate, e.g., PDF-1.4 in various ways:
  • Running ps2pdf14 on the PDF file after it's generated by TeX; this simple wrapper is part of Ghostscript. Other external software can do the same job.
  • LaTeX with PDF backends: \pdf_version_gset:n{1.4}
  • pdfTeX: \pdfmajorversion=1 \pdfminorversion=4
  • LuaTeX: \pdfvariable majorversion=1 \pdfvariable minorversion=4
  • XeTeX: \special{pdf:majorversion:1}\special{pdf:minorversion:4}
• If TeX exits due to the -halt-on-error option, write the help message to the log file, as happens by default.
• New primitive parameter \ignoreprimitiveerror; if set to 1, the error "Infinite glue shrinkage found in box being split" becomes a warning, so the program exit status is not changed to failure. Other values are reserved for future use. (Background: LaTeX2e news 39, section “Enhancements to the new mark mechanism”.
• Scaling fonts to >= 2048pt now results in an error message, instead of (unhandled) arithmetic overflow or silent changing of the user's value.

luatex (full LuaTeX news)

• LuaJIT 2.1.1736781742.
• New luaffi lib, supporting aarch64.
• If \tracinglostchars=4, warn about missing characters when glyphs are processed, instead of waiting until typesetting needs them. If \tracinglostchars=5, make that “early” diagnostic into an error.
• New primitive \mathemptydisplaymode; when set to to 1, empty paragraphs before a display equation will be ignored. By default paragraphs before a display equation containing dir nodes are not ignored, which has been the traditional behavior.
• For PNG handling, we no longer set the attr on the mask. If we get a report about dropping this we could add a maskattr feature, but one should consider to include a correct pdf of the image instead, it's more robust.
• Handle token combiners in immediate assignments.
• Cross-engine updates noted above.

metapost (full MetaPost news)

pdftex (full pdfTeX news)

• new primitive \pdfptexuseunderscore to use _ instead of . in various dictionary entries, e.g., PTEX_Fullbanner instead of PTEX.Fullbanner.
• Don't omit real spaces just because the font changes.
• Increase tolerance for detecting interword spaces in overfull lines.
• Ignore tiny resolutions like 1x1 embedded in images instead of exceeding \maxdimen.
• Cross-engine updates noted above.

(e)(u)ptex (full ChangeLog)

• Support combining characters with multiple codepoints, Unicode Latin characters and 16-bit OFM Level-0 with new kcatcodes: modifier(20), latin_ucs(14).
• Cross-engine updates noted above.

xetex (full XeTeX news)

• Non-BMP Unicode characters supported in synctex.
• Cross-engine updates noted above.

dvipdfmx (full dvipdfmx news)

• The ebb executable is now a separately-maintained script instead of a link to dvipdfmx.
• Support upTeX new encoding for combining characters via virtual fonts.
• Fixes for embedded TrueType fonts with >127 glyphs, and more.
• Fixes for including images multiple times.

cweb (full cweb news)

• New option +F for cweave and ctwill for compound statements.
• Sync pdf bookmark pages with table-of-contents.
• Integration of Martin Ruckert's solution for faster index sorting.
• Support macro \9 for sorting names-of-the-sections.
• Improved sorting algorithm in ctwill-proofsort.
• Output names-of-the-sections in ctwill format.

dvips (full dvips news)

Support upTeX new encoding for combining characters via virtual fonts.

kpathsea (full Kpathsea news)

kpsewhich outputs a blank line when a given file cannot be found, if more than one file to search for is specified.

tlmgr (full tlmgr news)

• tlmgr info: new option --only-files to report only the files for a given package.
• tlmgr search: new option --json.

Other programs

• updmap creates the generically-named output files as copies by default.
• latexminted is a new program, included in the safe list for execution from within TeX, so that documents using minted no longer need run with the unrestricted --shell-escape.
• ebb and extractbb are now separately-maintained Lua scripts instead of symlinks to dvipdfmx, for robustness.

Windows

Visual Basic usage in uninstall-windows and runscript.tlu has been replaced by PowerShell, since VB is optional as of Windows 11.

MacTeX

Again this year, MacTeX-2025 supports both Arm and Intel processors on macOS 10.14 (Mojave, 2018), and higher. It installs:

• TeX Live 2025.
• Ghostscript-10.04.0.
• libgs and mutool, for dvisvgm. In previous years, this dvisvgm support required X11, but that requirement is eliminated in 2025 and dvisvgm will work both with and without X11.
• HintView 2.0, which understands the color extensions added to the latest hitex in TeX Live 2025.
• Asymptote 3.01, which now requires macOS 11 (Big Sur, 2020) or higher.
• TeXShop 5.49, which supports Apple's latest Apple Intelligence features, including Writing Tools.

Platforms

• The x86_64-linux binaries are now built on Alma Linux 8, since support for CentOS 7 (even for security updates) ended as of June 30, 2024. We regret this but see no alternative. Binaries for older systems are available from other sources.
• TL now provides a file scripts-targets.lst with both the name and the target for symlinked scripts, for the convenience of distros. It's in Build/source/texk/texlive/linked_scripts. The longstanding file scripts.lst, with just the targets, in that directory, is still maintained.

Bug archives for the previous release and earlier years remain online under systems/texlive: both the initial release each year, and the frozen state at the end of the cycle in tlnet-final.

If you discover other changes that should be noted, please send them in.