uninstalling an old version

[Denis Bitouzé]

Le 27/02/21 à 10h32, Zdeněk Wagner a écrit :

> Symlinks are good if you are pretty sure that you always have just one
> TeX distribution

See below.

> and before upgrading it you delete it completely.

Maybe something TL could check, if not do?

> Unfortunatelly, many Linux distributions contain theri own TeX
> distributions and the installation is triggered by installing SGML or
> XML tools or even by R. These distributions (if not installed
> intentionally but due to dependencies) are usually incomplete and if
> you do not check the validity of symlinks every day and do not handle
> the automatically installed dependencies, you ask for weird erros
> which can sometimes only be detected by running strace.

If you install the symlinks in /usr/local/bin, it should take the
precedence over /usr/bin where the Linux distributions install TL.

> I saw such problems more than 100 times. This is why I stopped using
> symlinks in TL 16 years ago. It happened even to me that after
> installing a package not related to TeX at all suddenly TeX ceased to
> work with complex documents and I was only able to compile very simple
> files.

Weird.
-- 
Denis

----- Mail original -----
> De: "Zdenek Wagner" <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com>
> À: "Karl Berry" <karl at freefriends.org>
> Cc: "Denis Bitouzé" <denis.bitouze at univ-littoral.fr>, "tex-live" <tex-live at tug.org>
> Envoyé: Samedi 27 Février 2021 10:32:10
> Objet: Re: uninstalling an old version

> Symlinks are good if you are pretty sure that you always have just one
> TeX distribution and before upgrading it you delete it completely.
> Unfortunatelly, many Linux distributions contain theri own TeX
> distributions and the installation is triggered by installing SGML or
> XML tools or even by R. These distributions (if not installed
> intentionally but due to dependencies) are usually incomplete and if
> you do not check the validity of symlinks every day and do not handle
> the automatically installed dependencies, you ask for weird erros
> which can sometimes only be detected by running strace. I saw such
> problems more than 100 times. This is why I stopped using symlinks in
> TL 16 years ago. It happened even to me that after installing a
> package not related to TeX at all suddenly TeX ceased to work with
> complex documents and I was only able to compile very simple files.
> 
> Zdeněk Wagner
> http://ttsm.icpf.cas.cz/team/wagner.shtml
> http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz
> 
> so 27. 2. 2021 v 0:27 odesílatel Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> napsal:
>>
>> Hi Denis,
>>
>>     IMO, symlinks are the simpler method to install TL on Unix.
>>
>> I remember that that's your opinion, but I do not share it :).  Aside
>> from the maintainability problems you mention, to me the default
>> "containment" of TL within its own directories is a fundamentally
> > desirable feature that I would not want to suggest changing. --best, karl.

-- 
Denis