[tex-live] Re: TeX Live UNIX shell scripts

[Vladimir Volovich]

"SR" == Sebastian Rahtz writes:

 >> [but why do you update source.tar.bz2 so frequently? you can pack
 >> it up just before burning the cd - otherwise we download that
 >> large file without a need]

 SR> sorry, I am always aware that someone may burn a CD and *really*
 SR> test it...

hmm... does testing the CD depend on presence of up-to-date
source.tar.bz2?
 
 >> not true again.  just cd to Master/bin/ and run diff -ru between
 >> any two unix bin directories.
 >> 
 >> there are still a lot of differences!

 SR> Show me. I see, eg

 SR> [spqr-dell]/texlive/Master/bin:diff -r alphaev5-osf4.0d
 SR> i386-linux | grep -v Binary [spqr-dell]/texlive/Master/bin:

OK, no problem:

diff -r alpha-linux alphaev5-osf4.0d | grep -v Binary

i will not put here it's 100K output... ;-)

cd Master/bin/
for i in *-*; do for j in *-*; do diff -r $i $j | grep -v '^Binary files ' > .tmp; if [ -s .tmp ]; then echo ${i} and $j differ; fi; done; done

also, even the set of scripts is not the same in all directories.
(and the total number of files is different too)

 >> note: the mess in unix scripts which still exists is due to the
 >> fact that the scripts are duplicated in several directories.

 SR> I don't agree. If the source is stable, and everyone recompiles,
 SR> the the scripts are all the same, with no doubts.

but the practice shows that this is not the case.

i'm sure that all releases of TeX Live which were ever made, did not
contain the same versions of scripts on all unix platforms.
(at least that is the case for TeX Live 6 release)

 >> all script files (which are listed in my older email) from unix
 >> bin directories, and move them into a separate dir, there will be
 >> no source for this mess in the future -- all you will need to
 >> worry about is to have up-to-date files in ONE place.

 SR> and I'll have to worry about other things instead! like changing
 SR> all documentation and scripts to add an extra directory to $PATH.

that is a one-time change.
but maintaining the same versions of scripts on all unix platforms
requires permanent activity.
 
Best,
v.