[tex-live] Bug in TexLive installer

[Siep Kroonenberg]

On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 07:54:50PM +0000, hz hzmonte wrote:

Thanks for the new screenshot. I saw, among other things:

Can't spawn
"C:\PROGRA~1\TeXLive\install-tl-20170116\installer\wget\wget.exe":
Inappropriate I/O operation at ... TLUtils.pm line 2473.

and later:

...install-tl: open tlpdf(.../texlive.tlpdb) failed:
Permission denied at ...TLPDB.pm line 359.

Further down Error removing... and cannot unlink ... but these may
just be warnings. It happens all the time that Windows cannot delete
something for no good reason.

Anyhow, it should be worth a try to run the installer from outside
Program Files, especially because, even on XP, this directory has
somewhat restrictive permissions.

> When I said warning, I had the installation instructions, i.e.,
https://www.tug.org/texlive/windows.html, in mind.   If it is true
that there should be no spaces in the path, then I think the
developers should definitely document that in the instructions.

If spaces in the path cause trouble, then we would consider that a
bug which we need to fix. But we can make no promises about
third-party scripts.

> And I think reasonable software engineering practices should also
make sure things work even when someone thinks "there is no reason
to keep [some files] together/closer."  Whereas someone thinks there
is no reason to do something, someone else thinks there is very good
reason to do the same thing.  And I am not going to argue here
whether there is indeed reason to put the unpack and install
locations under the same parent directory.  If merely doing so would
break the installer, then I have to say that there is room for
improvement.

I am just trying to suggest things which may give you a better
chance of success.  We cannot possibly test every possible scenario.
Going with the defaults is the safe course.

-- 
Siep Kroonenberg