[tex-live] Tex-Live 2004 Windows Installer

Sebastian Rahtz sebastian.rahtz at computing-services.oxford.ac.uk
Sun Nov 28 17:59:47 CET 2004


Jason Gatz wrote:

> Making it do both ZIPs and filesystem would probably require hard 
> coding everything and then simply checking which version of TeXLive is 
> on the CD-ROM, but since you already have a Unix-based script to do 
> this have you considered perhaps converting everything to Perl (or 
> other scripting language) and making a Win32 GUI front end for it? 


Its been talked about several times. But no-one has ever found the 
energy to tackle it.
The current script dates back to TeX Live 1, when Thomas created first 
version.
It has not changed dramatically since then. Yes, it could be rewritten 
in Perl, though
you'd have to assume everyone had Perl installed. Putting a GUI on it 
would be good,
of course.

The bottom line is that production of TeX Live has been a matter of 
firefighting for the
last 4-5 years; people who have worked on it (and a lot of effort has 
been expended!)
have been improving the product itself, and no-one has wanted to take on
a rewrite of the installer.

I freely confess that I personally don't want to work on the installer, 
as I'd
rather concentrate on producing Linux .deb or .rpm packages.

If you have some time to spend on a new portable install script, it 
would be a really
excellent contribution.

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      
Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431

OSS Watch: JISC Open Source Advisory Service
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk



More information about the tex-live mailing list