[tex-live] datestamp in texcat

[Alexander Cherepanov]

Hi Karl!
On Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:46:50 -0500, karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) wrote:

>     AFAIU this catalogue is used at least to populate texlive.tlpdb. 
 
> Well, not exactly ... for the sake of precision: What ultimately
> "populates" texlive.tlpdb, in the sense determining what packages are
> included, are the .tlpsrc files, nothing else.  The "critical"
> information used by tlmgr for updates, like the file lists and revision
> number, is all determined from the repository, not the Catalogue.
> 
> Then, where we can determing a matching Catalogue entry, we import
> "bonus" info, like the descriptions, license, date, etc.

Ok, so texlive.tlpdb is completely rebuilt every time or just some 
info in it is replaced on updates?

>     All I tried to do is to help, 
> 
> I appreciate your efforts.  Sorry if I sounded testy.  It seemed like
> you were reporting the same bug over and over, when we had already
> (thought we had) dealt with it, 

Ah, that explains a lot. I saw it very differently. After Robin had
written that it's fixed I checked texlive.tlpdb and found that parrun 
is indeed fixed:

  catalogue-date 2009-09-13 09:55:53 +0200

but shipunov is broken (it was not before). And then parrun was broken 
again:

  catalogue-date 2009-09-13 08:55:53 +0100 (Sun, 13 Sep 2009)$

(Hm, the same time as above but different time zone; not sure why, 
maybe some Catalogue synchronization script causes this? maybe it 
garbles something else (like spaces) at the same time?). So I checked
Catalogue and wrote to ctan@ about irregularities in it. And Robin 
answered that it is totally insignificant as it's a valid xml and all 
that. IMHO already very strange but then you roughly seconded that 
it's completely insignificant instead of confirming that the precise 
format of attributes in Catalogue is important for texlive. So the 
only coclusion I could make is it's... well... completely 
insignificant for everyone (which would indeed be quite natural).

> and it was simply due to unrelated
> issues that the tlpdb hadn't been updated and therefore not visible.

It had definitely been updated hence the question at the top of this 
mail.

>     It's not yet in public texlive.tlpdb.
> 
> Actually, now the dates for parrun and shipunov are broken in a
> new way.  At this point I do want to get it right.  Maybe fixed tonight :).

It seems so:-)

Alexander Cherepanov