[tex-live] Feature requests tlmgr

[George N. White III]

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Pander <pander at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I would like to propose the following feature requests for TeX Live.
>
> 1) Can the installer ask if a cron job will be installed that will check
> twice a day if updates are available and will pop up tlmgr GUI? This is the
> same idea as Ubuntu's update manager.
>
> 2) Can the installer offer an option to enable e-mail notification when
> updates are available for server installation? This is the same idea as
> http://www.digipedia.pl/man/doc/view/apticron.1/
>
> 3) Also provide documentation to enable, disable and configure this after an
> installation has been done.
>
> Apticron is scheduled for 13:00 and 19:00 hours. Perhaps 13:10 and 19:10
> would be conveniend times.

What problem are you trying to solve?  Here, updates run quickly, and it is good
to see what is changing, so it isn't worth the bother to automate updates.  What
is worthwhile is having a local mirror if you aren't near enough to a
mirror site.

If you have a partial installation, the local mirror provide
convenient access to
packages you don't have installed.   If you have a complete install then you
need to download "everything", so if downloading is the bottleneck then a
local mirror is useful.

A couple years ago my systems ran 7/24 and were often running multi-day
builds.  Now the builds mostly run in under an hour, so the system are
turned on as needed.  Ubuntu and TL updates both use local mirrors.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia