[tex-live] Is the TeX Live 2018 installer (for Windows) considerably slower than previous years

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2018-08-27 at 15:50:05 +0100, Philip Taylor (RH-UoL) wrote:

 > I don't think that I am installing using a different methodology to
 > previous years, so what am I doing wrong and how should I tell the
 > installer to use my local repository ?

On Unix I invoke the installer with the -repository option.

>From the install-tl help message:

  -repository url|path
      Specify the package repository to be used as the source of the
      installation. In short, this can be a directory name or a url using
      http(s), ftp, or scp. The documentation for "tlmgr" has the details
      (<http://tug.org/texlive/doc/tlmgr.html#OPTIONS>).

      For installation, the default is to pick a mirror automatically, using
      <http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet>; the chosen mirror is
      used for the entire download. You can use the special argument "ctan"
      as an abbreviation for this. (See <http://ctan.org> for more about
      CTAN and its mirrors.)

      After installation is complete, you can use that installation as the
      repository for another installation. If you chose to install less than
      the full scheme containing all packages, the list of available schemes
      will be adjusted accordingly.

I can't try the Windows GUI installers here and thus don't know
whether you can avoid the command line.

If you have installed TL already, you can do

  tlmgr option repository ...

in order to switch to your local repository.

You have to set the repository option every year because the URL or
path is stored in

  texlive/<year>/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb 
          ^^^^^^

I'm sure that you did something like this in previous years too.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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