[tex-live] possible breakage of tl-paper on Ubuntu

Nelson H. F. Beebe beebe at math.utah.edu
Mon Dec 14 17:18:05 CET 2015


Our test laboratory of assorted varieties of Unix continues to expand,
and I now have about 70 flavors to test code on.  Among the newer
systems are advance releases of several O/Ses, and on at least one of
them, Ubuntu 16, the native package manager fails to update texlive:

	# PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin
	# export PATH
	# apt-get install pretty-much-any-package
	Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
	Setting up texlive-base (2015.20150625-1ubuntu1) ...
	mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXLIVEDIST... 
	mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXMFMAIN... 
	mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R... 
	mktexlsr: Done.
	Can't use string ("2") as an ARRAY ref while "strict refs" \
		in use at /usr/bin/tl-paper line 112.
	... many more such ...

Ubuntu 16 is a test release, so the breakage could be unique to that
specific system.  However, it appears to prevent installation, update,
or removal of any other package.

Norbert is the author of the /usr/bin/tl-paper perl script, and on this
system, I find

	% /usr/bin/perl --version
	This is perl 5, version 20, subversion 2 (v5.20.2) \
		built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi
	(with 51 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)
	...

	% /usr/bin/perl6 --version
	This is perl6 version 2014.07 built on parrot 6.6.0 revision 0

Does anyone else see similar breakage?

Is this a TeX Live issue at all?

Outside the apt-get program, I can execute the tl-paper script on
Ubuntu 16:

	# /usr/bin/tl-paper set all letter
	/usr/bin/tl-paper: setting paper size for dvipdfmx to letter.
	/usr/bin/tl-paper: setting paper size for xdvi to letter.

On another flavor, Knoppix 7, the md5sum of /usr/bin/tl-paper matches
that on Ubuntu 16, and the script runs fine there:

	# /usr/bin/tl-paper set all letter
	/usr/bin/tl-paper: setting paper size for dvipdfmx to letter.
	/usr/bin/tl-paper: setting paper size for dvips to letter.
	/usr/bin/tl-paper: setting paper size for pdftex to letter.
	/usr/bin/tl-paper: setting paper size for xdvi to letter.

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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org  beebe at computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
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