Thank you Xinglu for letting me know of Thiago's efforts. And thank you Thiago for your work!
Thiago Jung Bauermann <[email protected]> writes: > Hello, > > Em segunda-feira, 5 de julho de 2021, às 14:09:24 -03, Xinglu Chen > escreveu: >> FYI, someone else is already workin on upgrading Texlive to 2021 on the >> ‘core-updates’ branch (Texlive is already at 2020 on core-updates). >> >> <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/49408> >> >> Maybe you would be interested in helping out? > > Indeed, that would be awesome. One way to help would be with more testing > of the TeX Live 2021 patches. I’m not actually a TeX user, so the only > testing I did was building the “texlive*” packages, the Guix manual and > running the `tests/texlive.scm` test. It would be great to have someone who > actually uses TeX involved in this process. :-) > > Also of course feel free to propose or submit changes if you see anything > in the patches which you think could be improved. As I type, I am building texlive from your repo, so that I can get some use of it and see if I have suggestions. > From the original email: > > Em segunda-feira, 5 de julho de 2021, às 11:03:46 -03, Nathan Benedetto > Proença escreveu: >> You see, they give me the impression that Guix is really concerned about >> upgrading *all* of texlive at once. >> These variables tell me I should go to the file texlive.scm and bump the >> tag and revision, and then handle all the broken hashes. > > That’s what I did. :-) > >> Hence, it seems to me that any attempt to upgrade the texlive package >> would have to be done in a separate branch, which would only be merged >> into master when all the packages are upgraded. > > Yes, because updating texlive causes thousands of packages to be rebuilt. > For example: > > $ guix refresh --list-dependent texlive-bin | tr ' ' '\n' | wc -l > 2020 > >> Is this the case? > > My impression from working on this TeX Live update is that this is indeed > the case. > >> And if so, why? > > I don’t know why, but it makes sense to me. > As I mentioned before, I’m not a TeX user and I’m not familiar with its > ecosystem, but my impression is that TeX Live is produced and also supposed > to be consumed as a consistent whole. Mixing and matching packages from > different revisions of the TeX Live Subversion repository would mean that > you’re running a “Frankenstein” which no one else is running¹, and so you > have bigger chances of running into problems that don’t affect anyone else. > >> In any case, as this may be a choice between shipping stable and >> up-to-date packages, and as I am new to contributing to Guix, I found >> fitting to ask. > > That is the reasoning which makes the current arrangement make sense to me. > Note that there is a third choice: update all of TeX Live at once, but do > so more frequently and take the packages straight from the trunk branch, > rather than a tag. This is what upstream recommends, actually: > > https://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2021-June/047187.html Of course, software is always more complex than you expect at the outset. Both the --list-dependents count and the email thread you linked provide great arguments for treating TeXLive as a monolith, and I am glad you started this work. Honestly, TeXLive is so huge I cannot confidently say that I am competent enough to test it. It also seems to be a domain which is hard to automatically test. I will actually work with this patch for the upcoming weeks and, and comment on the patch or send my own patch if I find something. > ¹ This the story I’m referring to, of course: https://xkcd.com/1589/ Sure, this is my canonical version. I have heard rumors about someone called "Mary Shelley" exploiting the fact that Frankenstein is public domain to release her own joke version of the comic.
