[tex-live] TeXLive-2018 fails to update across firewall

[Adam R. Maxwell]

> On Jun 20, 2018, at 19:06 , Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> wrote:
> 
> 
>>>   "TEXLIVE_DOWNLOADER"
>>>   "TL_DOWNLOAD_PROGRAM"
>>>   “TL_DOWNLOAD_ARGS"
>> 
>> Ah. I wouldn’t be able to use these with TeX Live Utility, but they should work with tlmgr?
> 
> Why not? Is TLU removing these kind of settings from the environment?

Not at present, but setting environment variables for GUI programs on OS X is poorly documented, and I'm not telling anyone how to to do it. The net result is invariably more work for me, when some idiot reads on stackexchange that "setting umask=077 will totes secure ur system" and breaks tlmgr.

You can test the environment vars by running TLU from the command line, where it should inherit the shell environment.

> 
>>>       1.      If the environment variable "TEXLIVE_DOWNLOADER" is defined,
>>>               use it; abort if the specified program doesn't work. Possible
>>>               values: "curl", "wget". The necessary options are added
>>>               internally.
>> 
>> What about path? What if a system has more than one wget or curl installed? E.g.,
> 
> The usual way this is determined, the first one in the $PATH.
> We don't change the PATH variable (AFAIR). But TLU might be special, 
> nothing I can do.

TLU sanitizes the environment, again because user modifications to the PATH and other environment variables usually always break tlmgr and I refuse to waste more days debugging this kind of crap via email. Sorry, I'm not as nice as you or Karl :-).

-- 
adam