[Fedora TeX Live] Announcing TeX Live 2012 repository

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 20:00, Jindrich Novy wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 08, 2012 at 03:14:40PM +0100, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>> I don't use linux at all and I welcome the fast development (many
>> distributions are still stuck with tetex), but isn't name TeX Live
>> 2012 a bit misleading? The development of TL 2012 hasn't even started
>> yet.
>>
>>
>> Plan for TeX Live 2012:
>> 2apr: sources committed, builds begin.
>> 15apr: sources stable except for major bugs.
>> 10may: tlnet frozen, tlpretest starts, CTAN updates only on request.
>> 1jun: complete freeze for final build, no more updates, always more testing.
>> 15jun: make final images for the TeX Collection DVD.
>> August?: delivery of DVDs to members.
>
> This is actually a schedule when the development of TeX Live 2012
> finishes. It is actually under development since the TL2011 as far as
> I understand it.

Not exactly. Packages are constantly being updated, but they are all
considered part of TL2011.

There are two completely separate worlds:
- packages: they are constantly updated, no quality checks are being
done, anything that gets uploaded to CTAN gets included as soon as it
appears on CTAN
- binaries: the deadline for developers to submit binaries to
repository is 2nd-15th April; programs like metapost, pdftex, luatex,
xetex, ... haven't been even touched so far. Other programs like
xdvipdfmx and ptex have undergone quite some updates since 2011
though; icu has been updated this week, libpng, freetype and poppler
two weeks ago.

If you make a snapshot between 2nd April (or whenever new luatex gets
included) and the final release, you can be almost sure that ConTeXt
will be broken for example.

>> People will end up installing TL 2012 (let's think of Septemeber
>> 2012), thinking that they have the latest and greatest version and
>> maybe even start asking question about TL 2012 on the TeX Live mailing
>> list, while they will in fact get some random snapshot of TL 2011.
>
> People who install TL2012 now will have a development snapshot of
> latest souces + latest CTAN packages. It is stable enough and its
> development cycle comes to the end at 2nd April.

Development cycle actually comes to the end in june (if they will
stick to the schedule). Only major binary changes won't be permitted
since April.

It is very helpful to have a working package with the most recent TeX
Live. I'm very glad that you keep on top and that you did all that
work regarding licencing audits.

But please don't make a final TL2012 release for Fedora before TL2012
is finalized. Else users will be confused. OK, LaTeX users who use old
styles will hardly ever care or notice any difference and those who
want to be on the bleeding edge install their own version. But if I
was a Fedora user I wouldn't want to have version 2012 from March
2012.

Mojca