Planning for TL5

[Sebastian Rahtz]

Karl Berry writes:
 >     10. We agreed that it would be very good to create a "TeX Live" host for
 > 
 > TUG could easily afford to buy another PC we could dedicate to TeX Live.
 > I could probably even host it at my work instead of UMB, which would be
 > a better connection.
 > 
 > Sebastian, et al, if you agree this would be useful for TL, I'll propose
 > it to the board now.  (And if they put up any resistance I'll just buy
 > it myself :)

I am happy to leave the mechanics of the "TL Host" up to you, whether
its a separate machine, or just another disk, and its location. I do
think its important that we have it, though, if TL is to
continue. When/if you give the word, I'll transfer my entire working
setup to "texlive.tug.org", and start instructing others on the use of 
my sausage machine.

It would obviously make sense if texlive.tug.org NFS mounted
ctan.tug.org. Then on a good day, the sausage machine can grab the
relevant directory from CTAN, massage it, and update texlive. All I do 
at present is

 - suck directory XXX from CTAN using eg "wget
ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/supported/XXX.zip"
 - unzip XXX
 - ctantotds.perl XXX

this can be smoothed out quite easily to 

 - make it a single step
 - record its actions in a changelog
 - make it accessible via a Web form

I am not in favour of linking it to CTAN  mirror updates or installs
--- there still seems too much margin for error

Sebastian