[tex-live] TeXLive has no stable source tree and resorts to DVD with binaries?

[Norbert Preining]

On Do, 14 Apr 2011, Kārlis Repsons wrote:
> Sounds like no reason. Admittedly I perceived the actual deveIopment workflow 
> wrong (ah, forgot CTAN), but basically the idea is: the package authors and a 

That's why it might make sense to *read* the mailing lists and the docs
for some time before asking questions of that kind.

> more package conflicts or incompatible changes can too take time. It just then 
> might go off more quietly than what it takes to provide that inter-package 
> stabilization (is what I meant with "all-stable").

There is no guarantee of inter-package stabilization. There are many many
conflicting packages in the TeX World, and, so what? It is not that they
conflict on the *file* level (shipping the same file, or if it appears,
we try to fix that one), but you cannot use them at the same time.

BTW, do you actually write *TeX documents? Or are you just interested out
of curiosity?

> I read what Norbert stated already, the reason I still post this is to get 
> some opinions about that idea in general. Perhaps some Linux distros or Mac 

The idea was stated several times, if you want details, Karl pointed you
at the relevant places. And there is always the source, "Use the source Luke!"

> don't worry I'm currently using the downloaded binaries & co and it looks like 
> they too can do a decent job; just I want to sort things out -- weather I've 

Of course they do a decent job!!! What do you expect? That we ship rubbish
binaries?

I bet your TeX documents are not even close to creating problems in real
world. As said, I would be interested to know whether you actually use
these tools.

(side remark for the others: isn't that another occurrences of the
"why don't you do that in python?"-boy?)

Best wishes

Norbert
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Norbert Preining            preining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
JAIST, Japan                                 TeX Live & Debian Developer
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