[tex-live] tlmgr update

T T t34www at googlemail.com
Tue Aug 11 01:25:51 CEST 2009


On 10/08/2009, Jobst Hoffmann <j.hoffmann at fh-aachen.de> wrote:
> An attachment named updater-w32.bat was removed from this document as it
> constituted a security hazard.  If you require this document, please contact
> the sender and arrange an alternate means of receiving it.

Ah, I forgot that executable files are often filtered out from
attachments (also if they are in one the popular archive types: zip,
tar, etc.). I usually deal with this by either changing file
extensions, e.g. .bat -> ._bat, or by packing everything in not so
popular archive type (I think .7z goes through gmail without
problems).

Anyway, I've got what I needed already, thanks. Your *.xz archives
were enough to reproduce the problem. You don't need to send this
updater-w32.bat any more.

However, the problem doesn't appear to be a bug in the code but rather
in cmd.exe itself. Sometimes the subroutines are not invoked properly.
Here's what I've got during my tests:

[F:\DEV]
TL>call :foreachpkg remove_src_doc pkglist texlive.infra 14511 14583
texlive.infra.win32 14520 14546

[F:\DEV]
TL>ewrev ...
'ewrev' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

This 'ewrev ...' comes from the target label for 'foreachpkg' subroutine:

:foreachpkg cmd prefix pkgname oldrev newrev ...

I looks as if the subroutine code was read a few characters too early,
it should start from the next line.

This is the same problem that Dan reported a few days ago. Normally
this wouldn't cause much trouble, just a nasty error message, but in
some cases the entire label can be missed:

[F:\DEV]
TL>call :incltlpobj "Z:\tlpkg\tlpobj\" texlive.infra 14511 14583
The system cannot find the batch label specified - incltlpobj

This leads to fatal failure in this case, because the critical
subroutine was not found at all!

So I know now what happens, but unfortunately I still don't know what
circumstances trigger this behaviour. It is seemingly random. For
example, the last log file sent by Jobst shows no errors or
abnormalities, the update appears to be fully successful (Jobst, could
you confirm that with tlmgr -v --version).

What's more, during tests I commented out some lines in the updater to
leave behind all archive files for debuging and I got failures on
different subroutines then before (and in places totaly unrelated to
my edits!). I haven't figured out how to fix this problem yet.

My thanks to Jobst and Dan for taking their time and investigating
this problem with me. please keep coming your bug reports (although I
hope you won't have to).

Cheers,

Tomek


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