[OS X TeX] Question about TL manager and package updates

[George Ghio]

Hi

For what it's worth I have always worked on the theory that "If it's  
not broken, don't fix it" for updates. I do check to see if the update  
has an added function I would like or fixes a problem that affects my  
usage otherwise I don't update.

George


On 14/05/2009, at 1:04 PM, David Watson wrote:

> On May 13, 2009, at 9:53 PM, Adam M. Goldstein wrote:
>
>> Hi all
>>
>> This is only really tangentially about TL manager---more about a  
>> side-effect of its use.
>>
>> When I check for updates, often I find that the packages have  
>> changed in size only by a few hundred kb. For instance, tonight, I  
>> found that hyperref was listed as having changed, from 12,636kb to  
>> 12,984kb. On the one hand, it could be that every line of code has  
>> been rewritten and it came out to nearly the same length. Ok,  
>> that's an exaggeration, but you get the idea. On the other hand, it  
>> might be that nothing really important has changed, a bunch of  
>> comments were added, or its managed to take up a small amount of  
>> space on a new sector of the disk at CTAN and now the size is being  
>> reported as bigger.
>>
>
> I think there is substance to your question. I was wondering the  
> same when there were several "updates" to the achemso package, but  
> no actual difference in functionality or documentation, and also, no  
> updates by the author since around February. My guess was that it  
> had something to do with the block size of the file-system of the  
> mirror that supplied the update. Hopefully we will have some idea  
> soon when the wizards chime in.
>
>> Is my frequently checking for updates leading to downloading the  
>> same packages again and again?
>>
>> I realize that there is no single answer to this question, but  
>> maybe there is a general rule.
>>
>> Thanks all for considering my question.
> <snip>
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