[OS X TeX] Should update my Mactex installation?

[Herbert Schulz]

On Sep 4, 2012, at 11:37 AM, Filipe S. <mailists at iess.eu> wrote:

> I've just found out about the Tex Live Utility, and the possibility of updating most of it's LaTeX installation.
> 
> Until now the only way i updated was installing yearly each new Mactex release. But now i' curious, if the point of these releases are binary stability, is it ok for us users updating random isolated packages between releases? I would prefer to have the corrected and updated version of most packages but i'm not sure if updating through Live Utility won't break anything. 
> 
> So, should i use Live Utility to update packages in my MacTeX installation?
> 
> ——
> 
> thanks for your help!
> 
> regards,
> 
> FIlipe


Howdy,

The binaries are, generally, stable for each yearly release. However, given that there are many thousands of packages included in TeX Live you can bet that some bugs in those packages and interaction between packages will occur. When problems are reported they are usually fixed and the packages are updated. Once in a long while an update will break something else but it is rare and usually fixed up quickly by the next update or shortly thereafter.

I'm a bit extreme and update every day but that isn't necessary. TeX Live Utility is a really nice GUI application that uses TeX Live's tlmgr underneath the covers.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)