pretest 2021 begin

[Karl Berry]

Hi everyone.  I think the pretest area is populated with the first build
for TL 2021. See https://tug.org/texlive/pretest.html as usual for
details of how to install (unchanged from previous years), and the list
of notable changes that I've got so far. Additions or corrections to the
news are greatly appreciated.

The binaries for some of the platforms (x86_64-darwinlegacy, *-freebsd,
-solaris, armhf-linux) have not yet been updated. I expect that to
happen soon.  All others are current AFAIK.  Dick Koch is creating the
MacTeX/BasicTeX packages and they should also be available soon.

As I mentioned in passing a day or two ago, this year for the first time
tlnet will continue to be updated during this pretest period. That is,
regular package updates sent to CTAN will normally end up in both tlnet
and tlpretest. (If a package update should only be in the pretest,
and you haven't already told me, please say so in the CTAN upload notes.)

Please don't let this dissuade you from trying the pretest!  Better for
everyone to test now than wait for breakage in the official release. TL
has no dedicated testers or QA department, so it's all up to us
collectively as volunteers.

Hope it flies,
Karl