[OS X TeX] Re: TeX Live (MacTeX) 2010 Developement has Started.

[Herbert Schulz]

On May 14, 2010, at 12:26 AM, Ferguson, Don wrote:

> Greetings  "Herbert Schulz" <herbs at wideopenwest.com>
> On 13/05/2010 at 12:42 you wrote concerning
> [OS X TeX] TeX Live (MacTeX) 2010 Developement has Started.
> 
> Hello Herb,
> 
> HS> Just to keep everyone informed. Development for TeX Live 2010 (what will be distributed with MacTeX-2010) has officially started. That means that there will no longer be any updates via TeX Live Utility (or tlmgr directly) to TeX Live (MacTeX) 2009. If you use TLU or tlmgr to do updates you may get one last update (if you haven't updated for a while) but from then one you will always get a report that there are No Updates Available.
> 
> However, it will be possible to update via the 'last' update!? Yes?
> 
> I'm so new to TeX and TeXShop that I have not yet used TeX Live Utility or tlmgr directly.
> 

Howdy,

If you install MacTeX and then run TeX Live Utility (or tlmgr directly) to get an update it will update up to the frozen state. This might be two stages; one a critical update of tlmgr and the second an update of all the files that have changed since that MacTeX install was constructed.

Once that update is done there will be no more---at least for a while! There is some talk that there may end up being an update of tlmgr that will allow the continued update of ``packages'' (and fonts but no binaries) at a later date. By that time I suspect that MacTeX-2010 will be out so you can get the updated binaries by installing MacTeX(TeX Live)-2010.

> 
> HS> The principle reason this sort of thing happens is that it is a relatively small group of folks (for such a large project) that put this all together for us and they can't afford to expend their resources in updating the present version of TeX Live while also putting together then next version.
> 
> Understood, and thanks for the excellent work you and others are doing. Much appreciated.
> 
> 
> Cheers  Don (Green Dragon)

Well, I'm certainly not going to take credit for any of MacTeX itself. I help out in other ways (testing, MacTeXtras) but have nothing to do with TeX Live itself. All of the work of taking and compiling the binaries and packaging TeX Live, etc., into the MacTeX installer is done by Dick Koch and the group that puts together TeX Live works through TUG. 

And now for the advertisement...

If you find the distribution useful, please consider joining TUG, <http://tug.org/join.html>, or the TeX User Group best for you, <http://tug.org/usergroups.html>.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)