Incompatibility between the fall 2020 LaTeX release and the packages xwatermark and catoptions

[Karl Berry]

Hi Matteo,

Thanks for the reports, but I'm afraid I don't see anything to do.

    but it is probably a "distribution" problem, in the sense that maybe
    these package should be marked in some way (to report a warning or
    something).

There is no way in TL to "mark" packages or report warnings.
Nor do we (TL) have any way of knowing whether an update to a given
package on CTAN will cause problems.

    I must also say that I was surprised to get a breaking change during an
    in-release update :)

The breaking changes are unfortunate, but all TL can do is redistribute
what gets uploaded to CTAN. Running tlmgr update means "give me the
latest stuff". 

    xwatermark and catoptions
    I've reported it to the LaTeX-project (see also MWE below)
    https://github.com/latex3/latex2e/issues/411

Reporting to LaTeX is fine, but I expect it would also be useful to
report the problem to the package authors. Based on the plethora of
other reports, my guess is that the packages need to change to take
account of the updates in the new LaTeX.

Best regards,
Karl