[OS X TeX] TeXLive 2010 release date estimate?

[Herbert Schulz]

On Aug 6, 2010, at 7:32 AM, Kirk Lowery wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 8:15 AM, Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa at web.de> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Am 06.08.2010 um 13:26 schrieb Kirk Lowery:
>> 
>> 
>> Are there any rumors about when the pretest will be completed and 2010
>>> stable released?
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The pretest phase is completed, because there are no updates available. So
>> I am pretty sure that the DVD will be released this year.
> 
> 
> This year?! Does DVD testing take six months? (rhetorical question). Well,
> we outsiders don't really understand all that's involved....
> 
> Kirk

Howdy,

Unless problems arise---always a small but not zero possibility---I'd guess final release some time in September.

Putting all of the pieces together and trying to test it all is done by many volunteers with other constraints on their time. I'm continually amazed by the level of cooperation in getting the job done. As interaction bugs are found they are corrected ASAP and I'm sure some get through because folks all have limited time to try to test things; that's why there is tlmgr (and TeX Live Utility).

As an example, all the work compiling (for Panther, Tiger & Leopard (Universal) and Snow Leopard (64bit)) and putting together the whole MacTeX installer as well as the BasicTeX installer is done by a single person. Then it's up to a group of folks (you can join---next year since we are hopefully done this year) to install and test the installation, etc.

There are always enough changes and new features added so that problems crop up. One example: this year the graphic(s/x) subsystem will be able to do automatic conversion of eps->pdf in documents created with pdf(la)tex---this is still a conversion process using a special version of epstopdf but shell escape need not be enabled and you won't have to add the epstopdf package to the mix. There will be a document about this feature when you install MacTeX-2010.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)