[OS X TeX] Naive tex live utility question

[Alan Munn]

On Oct 6, 2010, at 5:49 PM, Adam M. Goldstein wrote:

> Hi all
>
> I feel that this must have been answered somewhere on the list or on  
> a wiki somewhere, but I can't find it...
>
> Suppose the maintainer of package X in TL 2010 releases an update.  
> If I run the Tex Live Utility, will it bring my TL 2010 installation  
> up to date? My impression is that, in the past, TeX Live for a given  
> year is frozen once complete, and that, accordingly, the TLU will  
> bring a tex live 2010 installation up to date as far as the frozen  
> distribution. So after the distribution has been frozen there's no  
> point in running TLU (at least for the purpose of updating  
> packages). Is this right? Are things any different this year?
>

I don't think this is quite an accurate description of how things  
work. TLU will continuously update packages (but not, AFAIK,  
binaries?) for most of a year.  However, there is a particular stretch  
of time every year during which the new TeX Live is being created and  
the previous year does become frozen.  So TLU will continuously update  
packages (and install new ones) until sometime in 2011 at which point  
it will stop updating things until a new TeX Live comes out.

Alan

Alan Munn
amunn at gmx.com