[tex-live] How about auto-download of classes/styles etc. ?

[cfrees at imapmail.org]

On Mon 13th Oct, 2008 at 01:19, Zdenek Wagner seems to have written:

>> But I do wonder how it could work with multiple TL installs. What would
>> happen if I switched to the previous year's release and typeset a file
>> needing an additional package? Would I get the package for the
>> appropriate year? I'm not saying there aren't ways of implementing that
>> but only that it would be another complication you'd have to take into
>> account in designing an implementation.
>>
> It should be so and the mechanism should be quite clever. It may need
> quite a lot of information. Suppose the document contains:
>
> \usepackage{something}[yyyy/mm/dd]
>
> The local disk contains an older version of something.sty. The system
> will therefore ask upgrade. So far nice but what if the user misprints
> the date and ask a new version that does not exist?

Interesting. I was more thinking of a case where the document contains:
 	\usepackage{something}
etc. and the document is known to compile with TL 2007 but not TL 2008.
If I therefore switch to TL 2007 before typesetting but package
something was never installed in my TL 2007 tree, would I be able to
count on getting the correct version of the package or would I get a
more recent version which might prevent the document compiling?

- cfr