[tex-live] Stable vs. Unstable/Testing Update Repositories?

[Zdenek Wagner]

2010/2/23 C.M. Connelly <cmc at math.hmc.edu>:
>
> I'm wondering if there could be more than one update path, with
> (at least) one kept fairly stable (with tested, known-working
> packages, scripts, and documentation) and one that is updated with
> the very latest and greatest from CTAN.  It might even be worth
> having a very stable (bugfixes-only) branch, a known-working
> branch with the newest safe code, and a cutting-edge,
> latest-and-greatest branch.
>
> I have a colleague who naively updated his TeX Live 2009 install,
> which happily updated him to the beta version of geometry.sty,
> which broke beamer, which he needed to compile his slides for
> teaching later that day.
>
You should preferably ask the author of geometry.sty not to put beta
versions to CTAN. The TeX Live team is not large enough to test all
updated packages for possible problems.

> Most of these problems get sorted out fairly quickly, and most of
> them can be worked around or temporarily fixed by a skilled user,
> but for faculty on a deadline, they can be serious problems.
>
Although I am a skilled user, I never update during a work on o
project unless a critical security update is available. I sometimes
delay updates even several months, sometimes even a year just to be
sure that everything will continue to work the same way. And you can
use tlmgr to make backup.

> As I have a department full of faculty who might easily get
> themselves into trouble on their laptops, I'm a bit less
> enthusiastic about rolling out TL 2009 than I might otherwise be.
> I'm not ready to flip the desktop machines over to TL 2009 for the
> same reasons.
>
>   Claire
>
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>  Department of Mathematics                 Harvey Mudd College
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-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz