How to test pdflatex-dev

[Xu Wang]

On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 10:08 PM Phelype Oleinik <phe.h.o1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Xu,
>
> On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 11:46 PM Xu Wang <xuwang762 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > $ sudo /opt/texbin/tlmgr install latex-bin-dev
> > [sudo] password for xuwang:
> > tlmgr: package repository http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tlpretest (verified)
> > tlmgr install: package already present: latex-bin-dev
>
> Good, this means it's installed.
>
> > $ which -a pdflatex-dev
> > /opt/texbin/pdflatex-dev
> > $ file /opt/texbin/pdflatex-dev
> > /opt/texbin/pdflatex-dev: symbolic link to pdftex
> >
> > However, I did not make the above symbolic link. Not sure where it's a
> > result from.
>
> That's normal.  Both executables 'pdflatex' and 'pdflatex-dev' are
> symbolic links to the 'pdftex' executable.  The 'pdftex' executable
> gets the name of the symlink and runs with that format preloaded, so
>
>     pdflatex-dev
>
> is equivalent to
>
>     pdftex &pdflatex-dev
>
> > Thus not a surprise:
> >
> > $ pdflatex-dev
> > This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.22 (TeX Live 2021)
> > (preloaded format=pdflatex-dev)
> >  restricted \write18 enabled.
> > **^C
> > $ pdflatex
> > This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.22 (TeX Live 2021)
> > (preloaded format=pdflatex)
> >  restricted \write18 enabled.
>
> That's because you stopped TeX too early.  In short, the format ID is
> printed when TeX opens the .log file for writing, and that happens
> (roughly) when you give it a file to process, but just by calling
>
>     pdflatex-dev
>
> on the command line, you didn't give it a file, so the LaTeX version ID
> doesn't show up (in hindsight, the command above is what I told you to
> do, so sorry about the sloppy instructions).
>
> You seem to have everything correctly installed, so you can try
>
>     pdflatex-dev '\stop'
>
> for a minimal LaTeX run (that prints the version ID), or run
>
>     pdflatex-dev <some-file.tex>
>
> to make LaTeX process that file.  Both should use the prerelease though.

I understand now, and it works now as expected! Thank you, Phelype! I
am very happy to have this mystery resolved. I was paying close
attention to "pdflatex --version" and "pdflatex-dev --version", but
now I understand it is not the correct commands to run. I will be
careful in the future.

Kind regards!

Xu