[tex-live] Will LuaTeX be updated to its latest release?

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 16 December 2009 Philip TAYLOR wrote:

 > I don't pretend to understand the intricacies of all this,
 > but when Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard writes :
 > 
 > > That's why I suggest *not* installing the new LuaTeX executable
 > > in bin/yourarch, but create a new pseudo-architecture as
 > > /bin/yourarch-local. You put the newest LuaTeX binaries here,
 > > then make symlinks to the regular bin directory for all other
 > > executables.
 > 
 > would it not be simpler (and avoid any need for symbolic
 > links) if the LuaTeX executable were to be installed by
 > the user in (say) /bin/LuaTeX, and the path then modified
 > to put /bin/LuaTeX earlier in the path than /bin/<architecture> ?

On Unix you have two choices, you can put /path/to/bin/<arch> to PATH
or you can create symlinks to all the binaries in a directory which is
already in PATH.  Both solutions are equivalent.  I prefer the first
solution, but since the installer can create the symlinks, the second
solution is easier for users who are not very familiar with the
internals of their operating system.

An important thing is the location of the additional binaries
relative to the texmf trees.  This means:  If you have

  /path/to/texlive/bin/<arch>

already, you have to put a local luatex into:

  /path/to/texlive/bin/<archlocal>

Since there is another version of luatex already, the search order
matters.  Prepending the local directory to path is ok.  But if the
symlinks were created by the installer/tlmgr already, it makes more
sense to *replace* (ln -sf) the existing luatex symlinks. Then only
the new binaries are in PATH and the search order doesn't matter.

But one shouldn't create symlinks to the new binaries unless all the
other symlinks exist, otherwise PATH has to be adjusted.  IMO this is
more confusing.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-3373112
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