[tex-live] Feature requests tlmgr

[Adam R. Maxwell]

On Nov 16, 2010, at 04:59 , Norbert Preining wrote:

> update --list *IS* shows *ALL* updates, also those of texlive.infra
> (more specifically those of the critical packages).
> 
> And if you want to automatize it I recommend reading the section
> on MACHINE READABLE in the tlmgr manager, then you can easily parse
> that and write a nice cron script, which you hopefully will send
> back to the lsit here!

I wrote a Python script to do this for the latest version of
TeX Live Utility.  The tlmgr part is platform-agnostic, so at
least shows how the parsing might be accomplished.  Watch out
for status; I only count additions or updates.

http://code.google.com/p/mactlmgr/source/browse/trunk/agent/update_check.py

One thing that's worth noting: if you use mirror.ctan.org to
count updates, launch tlmgr with the /actual/ host to perform
the update.  Mirror synchronization can make this really
confusing, otherwise.

There's a launchd property list and installer script also,
but those are Mac-specific.

-- 
Adam