[tex-live] tl09 release status: coming up

[Zdenek Wagner]

2009/10/15 Victor Ivrii <vivrii at gmail.com>:
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 6:03 PM, C.M. Connelly <cmc at math.hmc.edu> wrote:
>> "RF" == Robin Fairbairns <Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk>
>>
>>    RF> redhat has changed.  rhel (aka centos, i think) does
>>    RF> indeed still install tetex, but i suspect it's due for an
>>    RF> update, at which time it will be difficult for them to
>>    RF> avoid tl (though presumably tl07).
>>
>> RHEL 5 (and thus CentOS 5), which is the latest release, has teTeX
>> 3.  And, surprise, there were some problems I ran across when I
>> was doing new installs recently because I tweak some TeX settings
>> and the version of LaTeX included was old enough to trigger the
>> ``your LaTeX is ancient!'' warnings.  (The same issue also stopped
>> teTeX from building from source.  They fixed the issue, but I'm
>> not sure what they did (I suggested either editing the files to
>> change the date or (obviously preferable) updating the LaTeX files
>> included in the package.))
>
>
> In our distribution RH in its infinite wisdom placed all TeX binaries
> in /usr/bin
>
> while TexLive 2008 we installed into
> /usr/local/texlive/2008/bin/x86_64-linux/ and TL 2009 I installed into
> /usr/local/texlive/2009/bin/x86_64-linux/ (as sysadmin gave me under
> separate login all permissions for   /usr/local/texlive/
>
> So switch to TL for those who wants was either with
> setenv PATH "/usr/local/texlive/2009/bin/x86_64-linux:${PATH}"
>
I have exactly this setting in RH based systems for years. TL can
coexist with teTeX if:

1. teTeX is in PATH and TL is not => teTeX will be used

2. TL is earlier in PATH than teTeX => TL will be used

If you change the order, i.e. teTeX will be earlier in PATH than TL,
you will get into problems. Remember that TL is a superset of teTeX.
If you invoke a binary that is a part of teTeX, it will be used. If
you invoke a binary that is not in teTeX but is in TL, the TL binary
will be used. It may require a binary that is available both in teTeX
and TL. Now the teTeX version will be used which will end up with a
mess and a kind of weird error message. I have seen many such "bug
reports". Remember that teTeX is installed due to dependencies even if
you do not select it during installation. As written by Victor, the
correct PATH setting is important in RH based systems as well as
others that install teTeX.

> or with adding /usr/local/texlive/2008/bin/x86_64-linux/ before
> /usr/bin in the path
>
> This keeps everyone happy: those who want up-to-date TeX go with TL,
> those who want old stuff do nothing, admins avoid installing any new
> packages.
>
>>
>> I worked around the problem by installing TeX Live 2008 in a
>> central location, and pointing everyone's path to it.  (And I have
>> TeX Live 2009 in place next to 2008.)
>>
>> The next release of RHEL (and thus CentOS) should have TeX Live,
>> as Fedora has TeX Live.  (Unfortunately, back porting the TeX Live
>> packages from Fedora turned out to be a huge amount of work, which
>> is why I went with the central install solution.)
>>
>>   Claire
>>
>> *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
>>  Claire Connelly                              cmc at math.hmc.edu
>>  Systems Administrator                          (909) 621-8754
>>  Department of Mathematics                 Harvey Mudd College
>> *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
>>
>
>
>
> --
> ========================
> Victor Ivrii, Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
> http://www.math.toronto.edu/ivrii
>



-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz