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

[Herbert Schulz]

On May 14, 2010, at 3:26 PM, Alan T Litchfield wrote:

> 
> On 14/05/2010, at 11:55 PM, Herbert Schulz wrote:
> 
>> 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.
>> 
> 
> 
> Realising there are other priorities, if this could be achieved it would be appreciated. I have in the past missed out on vital package updates because I have relied on the updater to find and install them but the updater itself had no awareness of the updated packages (admittedly that was using MiKTeX and some time ago).
> 
> Cheers
> Alan

Howdy,

Tlmgr (and therefore TeX Live Utility) can update any package that is, or becomes, part of TeX Live. There are items on CTAN that are not part of TeX Live due to licensing problems or have been superseded by other packages (e.g., the glossary package) and it will never install/update those.

A big difference between MikTeX and TeX Live is that MikTeX has the ability to download packages that aren't already in MikTeX, but are in the MikTeX repository, on the fly when they are encountered in a file during compilation while tlmgr is a separate application and won't do that. On the other hand I believe TeX Live is more complete that the full MikTeX from the start so there is less need to supplement what is already there; my general attitude is to simply use a package and only do something if it is really missing.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)