[tex-live] small bug re installing x86_64-darwinvs.universal-darwin

Mojca Miklavec mojca.miklavec.lists at gmail.com
Mon Jan 21 10:33:34 CET 2013


On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 11:53 PM, Norbert Preining wrote:
> On So, 20 Jan 2013, tljack at forallx.net wrote:
>> But there is an outright bug in install-tl; it overrides one's choice of
>> platform from _inside_ the curses-like UI.  Hit 'B' to select a

>> take a manual override.  Surely fixing *this* bug can be done entirely
>> inside install-tl and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with MacTeX.
>
> No bug here.

There are two separate issues.

[to Norbert]
I would call the first one unexpected GUI behaviour. User gets a
feeling that he's able to remove the platform but it "unexpectedly
comes back". It would probably be less confusing if the option to
remove current platform would be "grayed out"/disabled, so that user
wouldn't be able to deselect the platform in the first place. But
that's a gui sugar only.

[to Jack]
The second "issue" is that GUI simply doesn't allow one to do the
equivalent of -force-platform, more or less on purpose. Even if it
wasn't a question of whether or not users should be able to break the
installation by clicking around and choosing to install win32 instead
of i386-linux on a linux box, the current GUI would have to be changed
to allow that. Currently users are able to select a set of platforms
to be installed, but changing the main platform is a separate
question. User can choose to install, say, universal-darwin,
x86_64-darwin, i386-linux and win32, but that information doesn't
suffice to tell the installer which one should be taken as the "main
platform" - which binaries should be used to finish the installation,
generate formats etc. In your case, x86_64-darwin binaries work, but
i386-linux or win32 binaries don't. I would rather call it a bug if
the gui would let you change the binaries to win32 and then the
installation would crash. 64-bit Macs aside, in 99% cases no other
binaries but the ones chosen by installer will work, so letting users
play with that setting is dangerous. Those 1% with different needs,
who are skilled enough and know what they are doing can just as well
use the command line option to change the platform.

Mojca


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