[tex-live] Script to update packages

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Sat Mar 10 21:06:56 CET 2007


>>>>> "François" == François Charette <firmicus at ankabut.net> writes:

  > Well, I have written a shell script, based on install-pkg.sh that
  > comes with the live CD, to automate this task. Provided the
  > package has been also updated on the TeX Live SVN repository
  > (which in most cases happens soon after), the script will fetch
  > the necessary files from the tug.org/texlive server via rsync. I
  > doubt this would potentially create bandwidth problems, but Karl
  > should definitively tell us whether this is acceptable or not.

The packages and tpm files are updated in the repository only and no
zip files are created at this point.  The zip files you downloaded
from ftp://ftp.tug.org/texlive/Contents/inst are exactly the same
files which are on the CD.  Downloading any files from there is not
necessary.

I also doubt that it is a good idea to make package updates from files
in the repository.  You can never be sure that they are working
properly.  I remember that recently a package had been moved from one
directory to another one.  In this case you probably end up with two
different versions in different directories and it is unclear which
one will be found by tex.

Using files from the repository makes sense for testing only.
However, testers are always welcome.  In this case I recommend to use
rsync to keep the system up-to-date.  A lot of bandwidth and time can
be saved if people copy the content of the CD first to the Master
directory before they run rsync initially.

Being able to update TeXLive packages would be nice.  However, I
thought a lot about this in the past.  TeXLive is simply a lot of
work, most of the work is done by Karl, and I do not see that anybody
has enough time to maintain package updates.

I also do not think that everybody has to have always the latest
releases.  If some package on the CD is completely broken I think
it's sufficient if the author sends a fixed version to CTAN.  It
should be TDS-1.1 compliant so that it can be installed easily.

Of course, a package updating system would be nice, but I fear that it
costs too much time.

Regards, and many thanks for your effort,
  Reinhard

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